Suicide remains a major public health concern in the United States. In 2023, 49,316 people died by suicide - about one death every 11 minutes. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also reports that 12.8 million adults seriously thought about suicide, 3.7 million made a suicide plan, and 1.5 million attempted suicide. Rates are equally concerning among adolescents, with 10% of high school students reporting a suicide attempt in the past year. Routine health care settings are, therefore, an important point of contact for suicide prevention. Many people who later die by suicide have seen a health professional in the year before death, and primary care contact is especially common. At the same time, risk is often invisible unless patients feel safe enough to talk about it. In routine care, one of the most important tasks is not simply identifying who may be at risk, but creating conditions in which disclosure becomes more likely.
Learning Resources — Filtered by Topic and Resource Type
Creating Welcoming and Affirming Clinical Studies for LGBTQIA+ Participants Toolkit
Purpose: This toolkit provides strategies, tools, and learning resources to advance LGBTQIA+ inclusion in clinical research studies across the world.
Creating Welcoming and Affirming Clinical Studies for LGBTQIA+ Participants Toolkit
This toolkit focuses on the implementation stage of training sites to successfully engage and retain LGBTQIA+ participants. Within the toolkit, you will find information on foundational LGBTQIA+ concepts and terminology, best practices for affirming transgender and gender diverse participants, and recommendations for collecting SOGI data as part of participant demographics. By learning these competencies, all study staff can become skilled and confident in supporting the dignity of LGBTQIA+ participants, and ultimately, can contribute to improving health equity for LGBTQIA+ communities.
Cultural Adaptation of Measures and Tools for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Data Collection
This publication was designed as a companion resource to Ready, Set, Go! Guidelines and Tips for Collecting Patient Data on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) to explain the importance of SOGI data collection to identify and address the unique needs of sexual and gender minority patient populations, with special consideration for culturally and linguistically diverse patients who are part of LGBTQIA+ communities. This guide will help healthcare staff to identify procedures to translate and adapt SOGI data collection questions and patient education materials for multilingual patient populations accurately and affirmatively, with considerations for Spanish-speaking LGBTQIA+ patients as an example. The recommendations in this publication will assist health teams in planning next actions to implement culturally and linguistically affirming practices that are community informed and integrated throughout the health experiences of multilingual, multiethnic, and racially diverse patients.
Increasing Equity in Pain Management, Substance Use Disorder Treatment, and Linkages to Care
The purpose of this Resource Guide is to support health center care teams in providing equitable, compassionate, high-quality care for patients in the contexts of pain management, substance use disorders (SUDs), and meaningful linkages to care. Inside, you will find actionable strategies and resources to help your care team reduce health disparities and advance health equity among minoritized and stigmatized people who, due to historical and structural injustices, are more vulnerable to undertreatment and mistreatment of pain and SUDs.
- Filed under
- Behavioral Health
Why Weight? Diabetes Prevention and Care Learning Collaborative
The Education Center’s Why Weight? Diabetes Prevention and Care Learning Collaborative focused on engaging teams from health centers across the US to undertake practice transformation conducive to diabetes care in LGBTQIA+ communities.
Throughout this publication, we briefly describe the structure and objectives of the learning collaborative and highlight promising practices for diabetes prevention with LGBTQIA+ patients. This publication provides a pathway forward for health centers to better serve LGBTQIA+ patients and to lay a solid foundation for diabetes prevention and care that is culturally inclusive and affirming.
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- Diabetes and Heart Health
Integrated Behavioral Health Care for Transgender and Gender Diverse People: An Affirming, Harm Reduction, and Trauma Responsive Approach
Integrated behavioral health care cannot eliminate all barriers and health inequities experienced by transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people. It can, however, serve as a bridge to overall wellness, and can fulfill functions associated with primary care, and in doing so, can represent a low-barrier, harm reduction method of meeting patients’ needs. It can provide a setting to address mental health concerns that may arise from the process of negotiating one’s identity as a TGD person, being denied certain forms of health care, or navigating spaces where one’s value is diminished. Integrated behavioral health care can also help to facilitate the initiation and management of gender-affirming hormone therapy, thereby reducing the need for referrals to specialty providers, eliminating wait times, and enhancing patient and provider satisfaction.Â
- Filed under
- Behavioral Health
- Transgender Health
Body Image, Eating Disorders, and LGBTQIA+ Identities: Supporting Youth, Older Adults, and Non-binary People
Eating disorders have steadily increased in the U.S. population, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although once considered a problem for white wealthy girls and women, eating disorders and related body-image disturbances are now known to reach across all races/ethnicities, socio-economic levels, and gender identities. Research suggests that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people have a high prevalence of eating disorders and negative body image that may require culturally responsive approaches to screening and counseling. This clinical publication provides information and strategies for improving the capacity of health centers to screen, assess, and address issues related to eating disorders and body image among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and all sexually and gender diverse (LGBTQIA+) people, with special considerations for LGBTQIA+ youth, older adults, and non-binary people.
- Filed under
- Behavioral Health
Ready, Set, Go! Guidelines and Tips For Collecting Patient Data on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) – 2022 Update
This guide was designed to help health centers and other health care organizations successfully collect sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) data and document the data into the electronic health record (EHR). For those just beginning the process, this guide can be used from start to finish. If you already have a system, but have encountered challenges and questions, this guide can help you address them. Even if your system is working smoothly, you will find resources and recommendations here that will help you move to the next level of data collection and analysis.
HIV and Diabetes Mellitus
This 2021 fact sheet from the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center provides information for health centers to manage co-occurring diabetes and HIV, including information about the metabolic side effects of antiretroviral medications.
