This study is basically cancer screening patterns in LGBTQ+ individuals versus the non-LGBTQ+ individuals. As we know, LGBTQ+ individuals, they face specific disparities – lack of access to screening – because of multiple reasons. Given that they have the fear of discrimination, stigma associated with their gender identity, that is why they don’t opt to screen and this is well known in the literature.
That is why we came up with this research question – are there any significant disparities between the LGBTQ+ populations and non- LGBTQ+ population when it comes to cancer screening in the US? To answer this research question we utilised the database from CDC, Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, to create a cross-sectional study.
What was the methodology and the findings?
As I mentioned, we utilised the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention database that we have the behaviour risk factor screening survey, the BRFSS. This is an annual telephonic survey in which they call about 400,000 people and get information specifically about three things. Number one is the demographic factors like age, gender and the other socioeconomic status like what income slab do you fall into or what race or ethnicity do you belong to or identify yourself? Also they have a sexual orientation and gender identity module in which they ask the specific question ‘Are you lesbian, do you identify yourself as lesbian, gay, bisexual or heterosexual?’
After collecting this data they also ask the specific question about cancer screening behaviour. They are very objective, like, ‘Have you ever had a mammogram? Have you ever had a cervical cancer screening or have you ever had a colonoscopy?’ So we took all this data and we did the statistical analysis. The [??] described with mean and median while to find if there is any significant difference in proportion of colonoscopy screening, mammograph screening, we applied the Chi-square test, Fisher’s exact test, and we went further to test association with logistic regression. All these times our p-value, less than 0.05, was considered statistically significant.
What are the clinical implications of these findings?
The clinical implication for this study is we found in our study that there are significant disparities between the LGBTQ+ individuals and non- LGBTQ+ individuals, meaning that certain populations in LGBTQ+ individuals are less likely to opt in for the screening. For example, we found that bisexual individuals are five times less likely to get screened for mammogram versus the heterosexual individuals. So getting the result from the study implies that we need to form more policies or do more intervention to promote this particular subgroup to get the mammography, get the colonoscopy and get the cancer screening behaviours.
That’s pretty much it. As I said, we concluded that the LGBTQ+ population face significant disparities versus their heterosexual peers so targeted interventions can help in bridging these gaps and bridging these knowledge gaps.
