Collecting Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity Information On Older Americans Is Good Public Policy

Editor’s note: Measures of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) have been added to several federal surveys over the years, but recently the SOGI measure was eliminated from the National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants conducted by the Administration for Community Living. Kathy Greenlee, former US Assistant Secretary for Aging, and administrator of the Administration for Community Living, reacts to this development. In 1984, a lesbian friend much older than me gave me very specific advice: “You should never come out to your doctor. And if you do, you should make sure they never write it down.” My friend’s formative years were the 1950’s and 60’s, when lesbians could lose their jobs, their families, and their children if ever found out. When she repeatedly asked me if I played softball, she was speaking in a code I was too young to decipher. (I did eventually convey to her I had played both catcher and left field.) By 2014, 30 years later, nearly everything had changed. One of the most fundamental was the conversation I was having with a national Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community demanding visibility, documentation, and acknowledgement by health care professionals. I bear personal witness to the magnitude of this shift in the community I have been part of for 37 years. From 2010 to 2016, I served as one of three co-chairs of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) LGBT Issues Coordinating Committee. Then-HHS Se...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Featured Health Equity Quality LGBT issues older americans act Source Type: blogs