Clinical Psychological Science Must Move Beyond Documenting Disparities in LGBTQ Health Toward Eliminating Them

Psychology and other disciplines have exceptionally documented sexual orientation and gender identity disparities in mental and physical health outcomes with psychological antecedents. Research on sexual and gender minority (SGM) health has seen impressive growth, including the launch of dedicated conferences, journals, and designation as a disparity population for U.S. federal research purposes. From 2015 to 2020, the number of SGM-focused research projects funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) increased by 66.1% (cf. 21.8% for all NIH projects). SGM health research has expanded beyond HIV (73.0% of NIH’s SGM projects in 2015 down to 59.8% in 2020) into other domains, such as mental health (41.6%), substance use disorders (23%), violence (7.2%), and transgender (21.9%) and bisexual (17.2%) health. Yet, only 8.9% of projects were clinical trials testing interventions. The need for more research on later stages in the translational research spectrum (i.e., mechanisms, intervention, implementation) to eradicate SGM health disparities is the focus of our Viewpoint article © 2023 American Psychological Association