The Columbia University School of Nursing announced Tuesday that it has established the Center for Sexual and Gender Minority Health Research to address disparities among the LGBT community.
The program is funded by the nursing school, located in Washington Heights, and has received grants from government agencies including the National Institutes of Health and the Institute of Aging.
The program had been planned for about four years, said Tonda Hughes, executive director of the center.
Although the nursing school in 2012 launched a program to study LGBT health, the new center—in partnership with the Columbia University psychiatry department—will focus on the role nurses, social workers, psychologists and other health providers can play in solving health inequities, Hughes said.
“There is inadequate research on LGBT health issues in our top 20 nursing journals,” Hughes said. The center will increase the amount of medical literature on such issues, she said.
At launch, the program supports about six doctoral or postdoctoral researchers and two junior faculty members. It is in the process of collaborating with other departments from Columbia, and the program could be expanded to support 25 researchers in the next few years, Hughes said.
“When I entered this field in the early ’90s, there were only a handful of studies about LGBT health issues, and they were mostly biased and cherry-picked,” she said. “I hope we can bring meaningful research to light and make a change.”
