“Health disparities have persistent and costly effects for minority communities, and the whole country,” Sebelius said. “Today we are taking critical steps toward ensuring the collection of useful national data on minority groups, including for the first time, LGBT populations. The data we will eventually collect in these efforts will serve as powerful tools and help us in our fight to end health disparities.”
According to a fact sheet from HHS, the administration has the authority to collect data on the LGBT population as part of the health care reform law passed by Congress last year, which allows the department the opportunity to collect demographic data to further improve understanding of health care disparities.
“In the past, identifying disparities and effectively monitoring efforts to reduce them has been limited by a lack of specificity, uniformity, and quality in data collection and reporting procedures,” the fact sheet states. “Consistent methods for collecting and reporting health data will help us better understand the nature of health problems in the LGBT community.”
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