Dr. Tonda Hughes, faculty member of the University of Illinois Chicago's College of Nursing, said most doctors don't really understand lesbian health.Hughes has spent a lot of her time "educating" her primary care physicians and now, she's hoping that a groundbreaking study she is spearheading will reach a wider audience.
"We would all like our healthcare providers to be better informed so that they can provide effective care," said Hughes, whose study will be the first to follow lesbians over time. "I hope it can really help inform healthcare providers in terms of encouraging them to ask questions about sexual orientation and to better determine risk factors."
Hughes and researchers at the recently received $3 million in federal funding to track down and interview nearly 450 Chicago-area lesbians they interviewed 2000, and again in 2004. They will see if their rates of alcohol abuse and other stress-related health risks have changed over time.
The team's experience, and limited other research, has suggested that lesbians experience higher rates of heavy drinking, smoking, obesity and depression than heterosexual women, in part attributed to coping with additional discrimination.
Lesbian health studies tend not be prioritized for health research dollars, due in no small part to a limited amount of funding for sexual minority research in general, and the greater urgency for HIV- and AIDS-related research, Hughes said.
The most often cited study on lesbian drinking and other health risks thus far found one-third of lesbians to be "excessive or problem drinkers"but was conducted at a gay bar in the early '70s.
"It was practically the only place you could find them, so they were doing the best they could at that time," said Hughes. "There is very little research, but a lot of speculation, on high rates of alcoholism in the lesbian community, and it just doesn't fit what I know from personal experience and professional experience. ... Our research is designed to provide a much more realistic picture of the patterns and variability of lesbians' drinking, and to provide information for developing alcohol abuse prevention and early intervention strategies."
The participants in the UIC study represent the most ethnically, racially and economically diverse sample of lesbians ever to participate such a study.
The research team will check in with original participant and interview an additional group of 250 younger lesbians, aged 18 to 25, to see if their physical and mental health have changed over time. They will then compare both groups with the results of the National Study of Health and Life Experiences of Women, a 20-year study that drew from a general sample of U.S. women.
Hughes said that they have managed to keep in touch with nearly 90 percent of the original participants, in no small because of the efforts of the women involved. Since the study kicked off, some have moved as far as Spain and Australia, but always informed researchers of their whereabouts.
"I think they recognize the value of the information collected and how it can help improve healthcare for lesbians everywhere," said Dr. Hughes.
Preliminary results of the study could be published as early as 2013.