Content area
Full Text
Contents
- Abstract
- LGBT Health Disparities
- LGBT Historical Context
- Risk Factors for LGBT Health Disparities
- Reconceptualization of LGBT Disparities: The Health Equity Promotion Model
- Social Positions
- Multilevel Context: Individual Manifestations, Such As Microaggressions, Discrimination, and Victimization; and, Structural and Environmental, Such As Societal and Institutional Levels of Oppression and Social Exclusion
- Health-Promoting and Adverse Pathways, Including Behavioral, Social, Psychological, and Biological Mechanisms
- Implications for Future LGBT Health Research, Policy, and Practice
- Research Implications
- Policy Implications
- Practice Implications
Figures and Tables
Abstract
National health initiatives emphasize the importance of eliminating health disparities among historically disadvantaged populations. Yet, few studies have examined the range of health outcomes among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. To stimulate more inclusive research in the area, we present the Health Equity Promotion Model—a framework oriented toward LGBT people reaching their full mental and physical health potential that considers both positive and adverse health-related circumstances. The model highlights (a) heterogeneity and intersectionality within LGBT communities; (b) the influence of structural and environmental context; and (c) both health-promoting and adverse pathways that encompass behavioral, social, psychological, and biological processes. It also expands upon earlier conceptualizations of sexual minority health by integrating a life course development perspective within the health-promotion model. By explicating the important role of agency and resilience as well as the deleterious effect of social structures on health outcomes, it supports policy and social justice to advance health and well-being in these communities. Important directions for future research as well as implications for health-promotion interventions and policies are offered.
Individuals from marginalized populations in the United States are at elevated risk of poor health, disability, and premature death (National Institutes of Health [NIH], 2010). Such health disparities are defined as adverse health outcomes for communities that have, as a result of “social, economic and environmental disadvantage, systematically experienced greater obstacles to health” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2010). Although a primary objective of the NIH is to eliminate health disparities among marginalized groups (NIH, 2010), it was only in Healthy People 2020 that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people were for the first time identified in U.S. health priorities as an at-risk population (U.S. Department...