Guest Blog: Article Review: Differences in Health Risk Behaviors Across Understudied LGBT Subgroups

From Open Minded Health: 

I’ve been saying for years now that the phrase “LGBT community” is insufficient when it comes to health. It’s not one community — it is multiple communities. The social issues and health issues that a gay transgender man faces every day are different from the issues a bisexual cisgender woman faces every day. There are some similarities and grouping the communities together has been politically useful. But it should never be forgotten that L, G, B, and T all face different types of health concerns and have different civil rights battles to face.

A study came out in August that has to be one of my favorites this year. Researchers in Georgia surveyed over three thousand lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, gender non-conforming, and queer people. They asked about health behaviors of all kinds. And then they did statistical analysis, comparing the various genders (cis male, cis female, trans male, trans female, genderqueer) and sexual orientations (lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, queer, straight). Let’s look at what they found!

• Diet and exercise: The researchers asked about fatty foods, eating while not hungry, quantity of vegetables and fruits eaten, and about hours and types of exercise. Transgender women had the least healthy diet of all genders. As a group, they were less likely to eat many fruits and vegetables, and more likely to drink sugared drinks and eat when they weren’t hungry. Both cisgender and transgender men were also less likely to eat many vegetables compared with other groups. Genderqueer people and gay cisgender men were most likely to exercise.
• Substance use: The researchers asked about smoking tobacco and alcohol consumption. Cisgender men were the most likely to drink alcohol, binge drink, and to drink even when they didn’t want to. Participants who identified as queer were also more likely to drink. When it came to tobacco, transgender men and straight participants were the most likely to smoke.
• Motor vehicle risk: The researchers asked about seatbelt use, speeding, and texting while driving. No clear differences for speeding were noted. Transgender men and straight participants were most likely to drive without a seatbelt. Texting while driving varied considerably; gay and lesbian drivers were most likely to text while driving.
• Sexual behaviors: The researchers asked about frequency of unprotected sex and sex while intoxicated. Gay men were least likely to have unprotected sex while lesbian women were most likely to have unprotected sex. When it came to sex while intoxicated, only the bisexual participants stood out as being most likely among the groups to have sex while intoxicated.
• Violence: The researchers asked about self harm and expressing anger at others. Overall rates of interpersonal anger were very low. Transgender men and pansexual people were most likely to self harm.
• Medical risk taking: The researchers asked about delaying medical care and not following physician advice. Transgender women were least likely to seek care; 1/3 reported that they regularly delayed seeking medical care. Both transgender women and transgender men were more likely to not follow medical advice when it was given. Bisexual people were also more likely to delay seeking medical care compared to lesbian and gay participants.

That’s a mouthful, right? There are a lot of details I left out of this summary and it still threatens to be overwhelming with detail. So how we can break this down even more simply? By talking about the conclusions.

The researchers go into some possible causes for all these different results. Maybe gay men are safer about sex because of HIV risk. Maybe transgender men eat few vegetables because of cultural expectations that “men eat lots of meat and not many vegetables.” Maybe gay and lesbian people text more while driving because of the lack of community-specific messages.

Maybe. And they’re all good thoughts.

I tend to look forward more to what we can do with these data. I’m pretty happy with this study — it’s one of the broadest I’ve seen for inclusion. Few health-oriented pieces of research include pansexual and genderqueer individuals.

It’s important to remember that these results are at the group level. Any individual person who is a gender/sexual minority will have their own health behaviors and risks. They should be evaluated and treated as individuals. From a public health perspective though, this research brings valuable data. Only by knowing what each group faces can prevention, screening, and treatment campaigns be created. Only by knowing, for example, that transgender and bisexual people avoid seeking medical care can we then examine “why?” and act to remove the barriers so that appropriate, respectful medical care is available.

So — can we change the conversation? Instead of talking about “the LGBT community”, let’s talk about “the LGBT communities”. Or, even better, “gender and sexual minority communities” — removing the alphabet soup and expanding the definitions at the same time. This research is only the tip of the iceberg. We have so much more to explore.

The paper is published online ahead of print. The abstract is publicly available.