Healthy People 2020 and LGBT Health

For three decades, the Healthy People initiative has provided a comprehensive set of national 10-year health promotion and disease prevention objectives aimed at improving the health of all Americans.  The latest iteration, Healthy People 2020 (HP2020), introduced Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Health as one of 42 topic areas in which national health objectives are monitored. Developing nationally representative HP2020 objectives for LGBT Health is a complex process. The strategy of Healthy People is to develop data-driven objectives that reflect important public health concerns and set targets for these objectives for the nation to work towards. Through the development of topic area webpages, evidence-based resources, webinars, and multiple opportunities for stakeholder and community involvement, HP2020 provides a platform to focus on health disparities and progress towards their elimination. The Healthy People initiative provides the ideal venue for tracking the progress of national health surveys’ inclusion of questions that collect nationally representative data for sexual and gender minority populations. This presentation will address the early development of objectives for the topic area and then concentrate on the progress of developing an approach focused on inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity questions in HP2020 data sources and surveys.