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Sangeetha Madhavan PI, with Kristen Stoebenau, Kenneth Leonard and Michael Wagner

Survey identifies shifts in domestic labor for men and women

A leading voice for minority and underrepresented groups

Child care key to economy re-opening

So-called “conversion therapy” efforts create serious harm for youth that are LGBTQ

Detailing women's work changes employment perspective

How Cultural Factors Shape Economic Outcomes

Infertility in low-income countries is an Untold Health Story

Supportive housing later in life tends to be a key concern for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) elders. Most senior care providers are un(der)prepared to meet the needs of older LGBT adults. This study evaluated the efficacy of a 4 h, face-to-face, research-based, LGBT-diversity training designed to improve senior housing facility staff’s cultural competency regarding the needs of LGBT elders. Findings from this study found a significant increase in LGBT content knowledge between pre- and post-intervention assessments and a significant decrease in perceived preparedness when working with LGBT elders. These effects remained significant after controlling for staff designation, religion, educational attainment, and training session. Findings suggest that staff’s cultural competence affected their perceived readiness to address LGBT elders’ needs. Implications are related to the concept of cultural humility or the lifelong process of understanding others’ experiences based on the recognition of lack of un(der)preparedness to create a culturally supportive residential environment.

Purpose:  We propose a new theoretically grounded approach for estimating sexual orientation-related health risk that accounts for the unique and shared variance of sexual identity across other measures of sexual orientation (i.e., attraction and behavior). We argue and illustrate that this approach provides specificity not demonstrated by approaches that independently estimate and compare health risk based on sexual identity, attraction, and behavior. Methods:  Data were from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions-III, collected in 2012–2013 (N = 36,309, ages 18 and older). The Karlson-Holm-Breen method tested the degree to which attraction- and behavior-based disparities in mental health and substance use disorders change after adjusting for sexual identity. Results:  Sexual attraction- and behavior-based disparities in mental health and substance use disorders statistically varied when comparing models that did and did not adjust for sexual identity. Adjusting for sexual identity appeared to have a larger influence on attraction- and behavior-based health associations among men; sexual minority and majority differences were attenuated on nearly every outcome after adjusting for sexual identity. This attenuation was less common among women. Among women, some behavior-based disparities were wider in sexual identity-adjusted models relative to unadjusted models. Conclusion:  We demonstrate more accurate approaches to capturing and comparing sexual orientation-related health disparities across multiple measures of sexual orientation, which account for the shared variance between sexual identity and measures of attraction and behavior. Adjusted estimates provide more specificity regarding relative health risk across specific subgroups of sexual minority people, and the intervention and prevention strategies needed to address them.