Correlation, Association and Causation…Is It Time for a Review?

correlationWhen I returned to higher education for my Master’s Degree, my end point was to become credentialed so I could begin my dream job as an inpatient nurse practitioner. This was a new role in 1993 and I will admit that as a single woman who  could afford only one year away from the paycheck, I was committed to getting in and out of my Master’s courses at Boston College quickly and efficiently. In particular, I had no aptitude or desire to become a researcher. My mind was clear that I would go through the “hoops” of the beginning research course (mandatory) and then “never do research again.”  I can hear your laughter now….

So, on day one of my Master’s year, I entered Research 101 for Nurses; thoroughly prepared to hate it, pretty sure I might not pass it, and very clear that it was not pertinent to my clinical life. (Yes, one can be quite naïve, even at age 35). Amazingly, I entered a classroom taught by the most wonderful teacher of my entire academic life (I’m including grade school here too). I’ve long forgotten her name but I’ll never forget her. She taught me to love and appreciate the science of science. For 18 rapid weeks, she taught a basic exercise. Each week we were given a nursing research paper to read and then in each class, we reviewed it and discussed the paper’s merits. She, of course, chose increasingly complex papers with a variety of study designs and writing skills. Some papers were good, some terrible, some stated what they did not find, some overstated conclusions….you get the idea. Our class thrived! It sounds so naïve to admit, but we were empowered to realize that just because the researchers said it, it might not be true…because of design flaw, overreaching results, and other errors, glaring and subtle.

Our professor also taught us to appreciate that while we may not be researchers, we were intelligent…and that research should not be sloppy, unreadable, or beyond our understanding. It was up to the writer to tell us what their question was, what was known about it, explain the study design, tell us how they did it, discuss their results against their question and draw some conclusions based on what they found. She demystified the process and actually taught us to critically analyze what we read….or as my Mother said, “Don’t automatically believe everything you read”. The fact that the reader of research had a responsibility in the process changed us from observers to participants. An amazing teacher with an amazing gift.

So, research became very relevant in my clinical role and subsequent professional life….if, for no other reason, than for me to critically read research and analyze its credibility. Since entering the field of obesity care, this analysis has become increasingly important. I’m not sure if is the weight bias/discrimination inherent in the specialty or the infancy of our understanding of the causes and biology of obesity…but often the “studies” that “prove” some aspect of obesity do not pass the rigor that I was taught in Research 101. Popular press articles and studies presented at conferences and professional journals that conclude association or correlation are often misinterpreted as evidence of causation.

With the flood of open access predatory publications, this issue has moved to the forefront in my mind. These journals, with their non-existent or shoddy peer reviews processes, lack of editing and oversight, and an emphasis of meeting the needs of authors, not readers, are publishing flawed articles. On a continuum these papers range from  poorly done, uninspired studies that couldn’t find a legitimate publication home, to deeply deceptive junk science reporting results that have the potential for real patient harm.

So, my thought is that it may be timely to review basic research principles at conferences, journals, and classrooms….sincerely. It has been a long time for many of us since Research 101. With so much information bombarding us daily through so many mediums, it is easy to just skim the headlines or read the conclusion of the paper. An emphasis on critical analysis of research (or what is presented as research) might remind us and our readers to take a moment to read the fine print.

 

Nobel Winner Declares Boycott of Top Science Journals

Randy Schekman says his lab will no longer send papers to Nature, Cell and Science as they distort scientific process

, science correspondent, The Guardian, Monday 9 December 2013 14.42 EST

Leading academic journals are distorting the scientific process and represent a “tyranny” that must be broken, according to a Nobel prize winner who has declared a boycott on the publications.

Randy Schekman, centre, at a Nobel prize ceremony in Stockholm. Photograph: Rob Schoenbaum/Zuma Press/Corbis

Randy Schekman, centre, at a Nobel prize ceremony in Stockholm. Photograph: Rob Schoenbaum/Zuma Press/Corbis

Randy Schekman, a US biologist who won the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine this year and receives his prize in Stockholm on Tuesday, said his lab would no longer send research papers to the top-tier journals, Nature, Cell and Science.

Schekman said pressure to publish in “luxury” journals encouraged researchers to cut corners and pursue trendy fields of science instead of doing more important work. The problem was exacerbated, he said, by editors who were not active scientists but professionals who favoured studies that were likely to make a splash.

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Seen in the New York Times…

GIRLS-02-popupA new campaign has been launched in New York City called the New York City Girls Project. It is designed to tell girls they are beautiful the way they are. An article in the New York Times on Monday, September 30 profiled the project which was noted to be the first campaign aimed at female body image to be carried out by a major city.

Margaret Comerford Freda, editor of MCN: The American Journal of Maternal Child Nursing brought the article to my attention because of this paragraph:

City officials cited evidence in The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing and elsewhere that more than 80 percent of 10-year-old girls are afraid of being fat, that girls’ self-esteem drops at age 12 and does not improve until 20, and that that is tied to negative body image.

Margaret told me that the research they were referring to was done by Dr. Linda Andrist and published in MCN. Her study on Media Images, Body Dissatisfaction, and Disordered Eating in Adolescent Women found that more than 80% of girls over 10 were afraid of becoming fat, and that self esteem dropped at age 12.

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More on Retraction…from the New York Times

Given the previous post and discussion, I thought this would be of interest to the group.

A Sharp Rise in Retractions Prompts Calls for Reform

By CARL ZIMMER

Dr. Ferric C. Fang

In the fall of 2010, Dr. Ferric C. Fang made an unsettling discovery. Dr. Fang, who is editor in chief of the journal Infection and Immunity, found that one of his authors had doctored several papers.

It was a new experience for him. “Prior to that time,” he said in an interview, “Infection and Immunity had only retracted nine articles over a 40-year period.”

The journal wound up retracting six of the papers from the author, Naoki Mori of the University of the Ryukyus in Japan. And it soon became clear that Infection and Immunity was hardly the only victim of Dr. Mori’s misconduct. Since then, other scientific journals have retracted two dozen of his papers, according to the watchdog blog Retraction Watch.

“Nobody had noticed the whole thing was rotten,” said Dr. Fang, who is a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

Dr. Fang became curious how far the rot extended. To find out, he teamed up with a fellow editor at the journal, Dr. Arturo Casadevall of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. And before long they reached a troubling conclusion: not only that retractions were rising at an alarming rate, but that retractions were just a manifestation of a much more profound problem — “a symptom of a dysfunctional scientific climate,” as Dr. Fang put it.

Dr. Casadevall, now editor in chief of the journal mBio, said he feared that science had turned into a winner-take-all game with perverse incentives that lead scientists to cut corners and, in some cases, commit acts of misconduct.

“This is a tremendous threat,” he said.

Last month, in a pair of editorials in Infection and Immunity, the two editors issued a plea for fundamental reforms. They also presented their concerns at the March 27 meeting of the National Academies of Sciences committee on science, technology and the law.

Members of the committee agreed with their assessment. “I think this is really coming to a head,” said Dr. Roberta B. Ness, dean of the University of Texas School of Public Health. And Dr. David Korn of Harvard Medical School agreed that “there are problems all through the system.”

o one claims that science was ever free of misconduct or bad research. Indeed, the scientific method itself is intended to overcome mistakes and misdeeds. When scientists make a new discovery, others review the research skeptically before it is published. And once it is, the scientific community can try to replicate the results to see if they hold up.

But critics like Dr. Fang and Dr. Casadevall argue that science has changed in some worrying ways in recent decades — especially biomedical research, which consumes a larger and larger share of government science spending.

In October 2011, for example, the journal Nature reported that published retractions had increased tenfold over the past decade, while the number of published papers had increased by just 44 percent. In 2010 The Journal of Medical Ethics published a study finding the new raft of recent retractions was a mix of misconduct and honest scientific mistakes.

Several factors are at play here, scientists say. One may be that because journals are now online, bad papers are simply reaching a wider audience, making it more likely that errors will be spotted. “You can sit at your laptop and pull a lot of different papers together,” Dr. Fang said.

But other forces are more pernicious. To survive professionally, scientists feel the need to publish as many papers as possible, and to get them into high-profile journals. And sometimes they cut corners or even commit misconduct to get there.

To measure this claim, Dr. Fang and Dr. Casadevall looked at the rate of retractions in 17 journals from 2001 to 2010 and compared it with the journals’ “impact factor,” a score based on how often their papers are cited by scientists. The higher a journal’s impact factor, the two editors found, the higher its retraction rate.

The highest “retraction index” in the study went to one of the world’s leading medical journals, The New England Journal of Medicine. In a statement for this article, it questioned the study’s methodology, noting that it considered only papers with abstracts, which are included in a small fraction of studies published in each issue. “Because our denominator was low, the index was high,” the statement said.

Monica M. Bradford, executive editor of the journal Science, suggested that the extra attention high-impact journals get might be part of the reason for their higher rate of retraction. “Papers making the most dramatic advances will be subject to the most scrutiny,” she said.

Dr. Fang says that may well be true, but adds that it cuts both ways — that the scramble to publish in high-impact journals may be leading to more and more errors. Each year, every laboratory produces a new crop of Ph.D.’s, who must compete for a small number of jobs, and the competition is getting fiercer. In 1973, more than half of biologists had a tenure-track job within six years of getting a Ph.D. By 2006 the figure was down to 15 percent.

Yet labs continue to have an incentive to take on lots of graduate students to produce more research. “I refer to it as a pyramid scheme,” said Paula Stephan, a Georgia State University economist and author of “How Economics Shapes Science,” published in January by Harvard University Press.

In such an environment, a high-profile paper can mean the difference between a career in science or leaving the field. “It’s becoming the price of admission,” Dr. Fang said.

The scramble isn’t over once young scientists get a job. “Everyone feels nervous even when they’re successful,” he continued. “They ask, ‘Will this be the beginning of the decline?’ ”

University laboratories count on a steady stream of grants from the government and other sources. The National Institutes of Health accepts a much lower percentage of grant applications today than in earlier decades. At the same time, many universities expect scientists to draw an increasing part of their salaries from grants, and these pressures have influenced how scientists are promoted.

“What people do is they count papers, and they look at the prestige of the journal in which the research is published, and they see how many grant dollars scientists have, and if they don’t have funding, they don’t get promoted,” Dr. Fang said. “It’s not about the quality of the research.”

Dr. Ness likens scientists today to small-business owners, rather than people trying to satisfy their curiosity about how the world works. “You’re marketing and selling to other scientists,” she said. “To the degree you can market and sell your products better, you’re creating the revenue stream to fund your enterprise.”

Universities want to attract successful scientists, and so they have erected a glut of science buildings, Dr. Stephan said. Some universities have gone into debt, betting that the flow of grant money will eventually pay off the loans. “It’s really going to bite them,” she said.

With all this pressure on scientists, they may lack the extra time to check their own research — to figure out why some of their data doesn’t fit their hypothesis, for example. Instead, they have to be concerned about publishing papers before someone else publishes the same results.

“You can’t afford to fail, to have your hypothesis disproven,” Dr. Fang said. “It’s a small minority of scientists who engage in frank misconduct. It’s a much more insidious thing that you feel compelled to put the best face on everything.”

Adding to the pressure, thousands of new Ph.D. scientists are coming out of countries like China and India. Writing in the April 5 issue of Nature, Dr. Stephan points out that a number of countries — including China, South Korea and Turkey — now offer cash rewards to scientists who get papers into high-profile journals. She has found these incentives set off a flood of extra papers submitted to those journals, with few actually being published in them. “It clearly burdens the system,” she said.

To change the system, Dr. Fang and Dr. Casadevall say, start by giving graduate students a better understanding of science’s ground rules — what Dr. Casadevall calls “the science of how you know what you know.”

They would also move away from the winner-take-all system, in which grants are concentrated among a small fraction of scientists. One way to do that may be to put a cap on the grants any one lab can receive.

Such a shift would require scientists to surrender some of their most cherished practices — the priority rule, for example, which gives all the credit for a scientific discovery to whoever publishes results first. (Three centuries ago, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz were bickering about who invented calculus.) Dr. Casadevall thinks it leads to rival research teams’ obsessing over secrecy, and rushing out their papers to beat their competitors. “And that can’t be good,” he said.

To ease such cutthroat competition, the two editors would also change the rules for scientific prizes and would have universities take collaboration into account when they decide on promotions.

Ms. Bradford, of Science magazine, agreed. “I would agree that a scientist’s career advancement should not depend solely on the publications listed on his or her C.V.,” she said, “and that there is much room for improvement in how scientific talent in all its diversity can be nurtured.”

Even scientists who are sympathetic to the idea of fundamental change are skeptical that it will happen any time soon. “I don’t think they have much chance of changing what they’re talking about,” said Dr. Korn, of Harvard.

But Dr. Fang worries that the situation could be become much more dire if nothing happens soon. “When our generation goes away, where is the new generation going to be?” he asked. “All the scientists I know are so anxious about their funding that they don’t make inspiring role models. I heard it from my own kids, who went into art and music respectively. They said, ‘You know, we see you, and you don’t look very happy.’ ”

Source: The New York Times

An Interesting Study from the University of Pennsylvania

I love when nurses do interesting and creative research and to me, this study fits that description to a “T.” This was a press release I received from Penn entitled “Science in Action.”

Food Stamps and Farmers’ Markets

Current food stamp programs at urban farmers’ markets attempting to bring fresh produce to economically stressed city dwellers are so complicated for the shopper and expensive for the farmer that fewer people are taking advantage of the federal program designed to help them, according to research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.

Record numbers of Americans are receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, as food stamps are now known, and many SNAP participants live in neighborhoods with little or no access to healthy food. A study conducted at the Clark Park Farmers’ Market in Philadelphia, Pa., found that making it easier for vendors to collect SNAP payments with electronic point-of-sale systems increased fresh produce sales to SNAP recipients by 38 percent.

However, the costs associated with such systems may put them out of reach for farmers. The study, by Penn Nursing professor Alison M. Buttenheim, PhD, MBA, and colleagues, appears in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

“Our study highlights the need for an equitable approach to subsidizing Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) fees at farmers’ markets,” Dr. Buttenheim reported. “Vendors told us, and we confirmed with a cost-benefit analysis, that they would not be able to break even on sales after paying the associated costs.”

SNAP participants access their benefits through EBT cards. To accept the cards at farmers’ markets, vendors must rent wireless POS terminals, pay for wireless service, and cover transaction fees. Because of the associated costs, many market managers operate a single wireless POS terminal for the entire market. SNAP beneficiaries may buy a token that they can exchange for produce, but they can’t receive change. Alternatively, customers can make their selections with a vendor, get a paper receipt for the total amount of the purchase, and present the receipt to the central terminal, where the customer’s EBT card is swiped for the exact amount of purchase. This must be repeated for each vendor the customer wants to visit.

Dr. Alison M. Buttenheim

Instead, Dr. Buttenheim and colleagues provided each vendor at the Clark Park Farmers’ Market with a wireless POS terminal for EBT and credit/debit card transactions. A grant covered all associated wireless charges, transaction fees, and processing fees during a pilot program which ran from June 2008 through February 2009. After the pilot period, the market returned to a single market-operated terminal and receipt system.

Researchers analyzed sales data at the market for four years, beginning 17 months before the pilot project and ending 22 months afterward. There was a 38 percent increase in SNAP/EBT sales during the months with multiple vendor-operated terminals. However, after the pilot project ended, sales to SNAP participants returned to pre-pilot levels, controlling for increases in SNAP participation in Philadelphia.

“Many stakeholders want to increase SNAP redemptions at farmers’ markets,” said Dr. Buttenheim. “We hope this study can inform policymakers about the specific mechanisms driving SNAP redemptions and about the need for subsidies for wireless POS technology at farmers’ markets.”

In an accompanying podcast, Dr. Buttenheim and co-author Allison Karpyn of The Food Trust, a Philadelphia nonprofit working with communities on lasting and stable sources of affordable food, discuss the impact of wireless POS terminals at farmers’ markets on sales to SNAP beneficiaries, and the policy implications of their research. The podcast is available at http://andjrnl.org/content/podcast.

Reference:

Buttenheim AM, Havassy J, Fang M, Glyn J, Karpyn AE. Increasing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program/Electronic Benefits Transfer Sales at Farmers’Markets with Vendor-Operated Wireless Point-of-Sale Terminals. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2012 Mar 15. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 22425028.

RWJF Announces 12 Faculty Scholars

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Announces
12 New ‘Nurse Faculty Scholars’

Prestigious Program Advances Careers, Health Research of Promising Junior Nurse Faculty

PRINCETON, N.J., Sept. 1, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) today announced the names of the 12 outstanding nursing faculty from across the country who were selected to participate in its prestigious Nurse Faculty Scholars program this year.  The RWJF Nurse Faculty Scholars program is strengthening the academic productivity and overall excellence of nursing schools by developing the next generation of leaders in academic nursing. It is providing $28 million over five years to outstanding junior nursing faculty to promote their academic careers, support their research and reduce the nation’s severe nurse faculty shortage. This is the fourth cohort of RWJF Nurse Faculty Scholars.

Each Nurse Faculty Scholar receives a three-year $350,000 grant to pursue research, as well as mentoring from senior faculty at his or her institution. The award is given to junior faculty who show outstanding promise as future leaders in academic nursing.  The Scholars chosen this year are conducting a range of health studies, from using story-telling to encourage Native American women to get mammograms, to using simulation to help reduce medical errors in hospitals caused by interruptions, to examining the impact of family strength and parenting on reducing risky behavior among teens, to investigating whether home improvements can realize health benefits for disabled, low-income seniors.

“Several Scholars in earlier cohorts have published their research and are already helping to improve health care and advance nursing and nursing education,” said Jacquelyn Campbell, Ph.D., R.N, F.A.A.N., national program director for the RWJF Nurse Faculty Scholars Program.  Campbell is Anna D. Wolf Chair and professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, which provides technical direction to the program. “It’s exciting to begin the work with this newest group of Scholars and I look forward to seeing where their work, their enthusiasm and their skills take them.”

This year’s selection comes as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is embarking on a collaborative campaign to transform the nursing profession to improve health and health care.  Based on the recommendations from a groundbreaking Institute of Medicine nursing report released last year—The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, RWJF is spearheading the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action to engage nurses and non-nurses in a nationwide effort to overhaul the nursing profession. The campaign is working to implement solutions to the challenges facing the nursing profession and to build upon nurse-based approaches to improving quality and transforming the way Americans receive health care.

Supporting junior nurse faculty will help curb a shortage of nurse educators that could undermine the health and health care of all Americans. The Affordable Care Act will vastly increase the number of people who can access health care in the United States. As the number of patients increases, there will be greater demand for skilled nurses and faculty to educate them.  Right now, many schools of nursing are turning away qualified applicants because they lack the faculty to teach them.

The RWJF Nurse Faculty Scholars program is helping to curb the shortage by helping more junior faculty succeed in, and commit to, academic careers. The program provides talented junior faculty with salary and research support as well as the chance to participate in institutional and national mentoring activities, leadership training, and networking events with colleagues in nursing and other fields, while continuing to teach and provide institutional, professional and community service at their universities.

“We are particularly pleased that several of our scholars are reaching a level of achievement recognized by the American Academy of Nursing,” said Campbell. “Three scholars were inducted as fellows of the American Academy of Nursing last year, and this year six more will receive that honor.”

The RWJF Nurse Faculty Scholars Program strives to increase the racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of nursing by fostering leadership skills among scholars to recruit and retain diverse faculties and student bodies at their schools of nursing.  To that end, the program encourages applicants with diverse backgrounds.

The program will also enhance the stature of the scholars’ academic institutions, which will benefit fellow nurse educators seeking professional development opportunities.

To receive the award, scholars must be registered nurses who have completed a research doctorate in nursing or a related discipline and who have held a tenure-eligible faculty position at an accredited nursing school for at least two and no more than five years.

This year’s Nurse Faculty Scholar award recipients and their research projects are:

  • Anna Beeber, Ph.D., R.N., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Developing Best Nursing Practices in Assisted Living;
  • Jennifer Bellot, Ph.D., R.N., M.H.S.A., Thomas Jefferson University, Painting a Portrait of Utilization and Integration: Medicare and Nurse Managed Centers;  
  • Tina Bloom, Ph.D., R.N., The Curators of University of Missouri, Internet-based Safety Planning with Abused Pregnant Rural Women;
  • Alexa Doig, Ph.D., R.N., University of Utah, Simulation Training to Reduce Medication Errors Caused by Interruptions;
  • Jill Esquivel, Ph.D., R.N., N.P.,  University of California, San Francisco, A Self Care Intervention for Hispanic Patients with Heart Failure;  
  • Rosa Gonzalez-Guarda, Ph.D., R.N., University of Miami, Joven (Youth): Juntos Opuestos a la Violencia Entre Novios/Together Against Teen Dating Violence;
  • Nalo Hamilton, Ph.D., R.N., University of California, Los Angeles, Insulin-Like Growth Factor-2, Estrogen Receptors and Racial Disparities;  
  • Emily Haozous, Ph.D., R.N., University of New Mexico, Digital Storytelling and Medical Mistrust in American Indian Women;
  • Tsui-Sui Annie Kao, Ph.D., R.N., University of Michigan, Family Collective Efficacy: An Underdeveloped Mechanism to Minimize Adolescent Risk Behaviors;
  • Matthew McHugh, Ph.D., J.D., M.P.H., R.N., C.R.N.P., University of Pennsylvania, Nursing Care Environment, Neighborhood, and Racial and Ethnic Disparities;
  • Elena Siegel, Ph.D., R.N., University of California, Davis, Leadership Support for Quality Improvement in Nursing Homes; and  
  • Sarah Szanton, Ph.D., C.R.N.P., Johns Hopkins University, Bio-Behavioral Mediators of Enhanced Daily Function in Disabled Low –Income Older Adults.

To learn more about the program, visit www.nursefacultyscholars.org.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses on the pressing health and health care issues facing our country. As the nation’s largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to health and health care, the Foundation works with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to identify solutions and achieve comprehensive, measurable and timely change. For nearly 40 years the Foundation has brought experience, commitment, and a rigorous, balanced approach to the problems that affect the health and health care of those it serves. When it comes to helping Americans lead healthier lives and get the care they need, the Foundation expects to make a difference in your lifetime. For more information, visit www.rwjf.org.

 

 

 

Eight Question Survey Helps to Predict PTSD

A simple eight-question survey administered soon after injury can help predict which of the 30 million Americans seeking hospital treatment for injuries each year may develop depression or post-traumatic stress, report Therese S. Richmond, PhD, CRNP , associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, and her colleagues in General Hospital Psychiatry.

“Depression and PTSD exert a significant, independent, and persistent effect on general health, work status, somatic symptoms, adjustment to illness, and function after injury,” the authors wrote, also emphasizing that even minor injuries can lead to traumatic stress responses.

Dr. Richmond

The findings allow healthcare providers to identify patients at highest risk for developing these disorders and to target appropriate resources to this vulnerable group.

This screening tool – reportedly one of the first of its kind for adults in the U.S. – could have a great impact on the judicious allocation of costly mental health resources.

Using an eight-question survey, all injured patients can be rapidly assessed for risk in the hospital. Healthcare providers can then provide patients classed as high-risk for developing depression or PTSD with information about symptoms to look for and advise them to contact their primary care providers should symptoms surface. This intervention can facilitate early diagnosis of these disabling disorders.

The study reported nearly 100 percent accuracy in negative results. Only five percent of injured patients who tested negative for risk of depression on the screening survey developed depression and no patients who tested negative for PTSD risk developed PTSD. At the same time, not all patients who screen positive will develop these disorders. The researchers do not suggest that all patients who screen positive receive mental health services, but rather that this finding prompt systematic provision of information and additional follow-up.

The authors caution that while the findings on this initial study are most promising, they need to be replicated in an independent sample.

With Dr. Richmond, the study authors are: Josef Ruzek, PhD; Theimann Ackerson, MSSW; Douglas J. Wiebe, PhD; Flaura Winston, MD, PhD; Nancy Kassam-Adams, PhD.

The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Better Understanding

Date:  March 31, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Researchers Need to Engage Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender Populations in Health Studies

WASHINGTON — Researchers need to proactively engage lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in health studies and collect data on these populations to identify and better understand health conditions that affect them, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine.  The scarcity of research yields an incomplete picture of LGBT health status and needs, which is further fragmented by the tendency to treat sexual and gender minorities as a single homogeneous group, said the committee that wrote the report.

The report provides a thorough compilation of what is known about the health of each of these groups at different stages of life and outlines an agenda for the research and data collection necessary to form a fuller understanding.

“It’s easy to assume that because we are all humans, gender, race, or other characteristics of study participants shouldn’t matter in health research, but they certainly do,” said committee chair Robert Graham, professor of family medicine and public health sciences and Robert and Myfanwy Smith Chair, department of family medicine, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati.  “It was only when researchers made deliberate efforts to engage women and racial and ethnic minorities in studies that we discovered differences in how some diseases occur in and affect specific populations.  Routine collection of information on race and ethnicity has expanded our understanding of conditions that are more prevalent among various groups or that affect them differently.  We should strive for the same attention to and engagement of sexual and gender minorities in health research.”

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