Discussion: LGBTQ Healthcare Access Barriers and Nursing Interventions

This discussion board post addresses the factors contributing to the underutilization of healthcare services by the LGBTQ community. It examines biological, psychological, sociocultural, and behavioral factors, such as discrimination, stigma, and lack of understanding, that create barriers to care. The post also identifies the importance of nursing interventions to improve access, including increasing knowledge and skills about sexual orientations and gender identity, health promotion, and creating an empowered and welcoming environment. The author emphasizes the role of healthcare professionals in providing culturally competent care and advocating for policy changes to address the unique healthcare needs of the LGBTQ population. The post utilizes scholarly sources to support the arguments and provides practical solutions for improving healthcare access and outcomes for this population.

Running head: PUBLIC HEALTH
PUBLIC HEALTH
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Issues experienced by LGBTQ:
LGBTQ often experience a huge number of health disparities due to biological,
psychological, sociocultural factors which subjected them to high health risk and psychological
distress.
Biological factors:
LGBTQ community have different sexual orientation from other members of the
community which resulted in a lack of gender recognition and relationship recognition.
Therefore, it hindered them to receive adequate health care access (Solomon et al., 2017). Due to
different sexual orientation, they experience discrimination from other members of the
community which resulted in poverty and hinder them to receive adequate health care services.
Psychological factors:
Due to dynamic sexual orientation and gender recognition, the population of the
community often experience stigma, fear and discrimination from the community members and
health care professionals. Homophobia or intolerance towards homosexuality is also a common
factor that provides them limited access to health care services (Solomon et al., 2017).
Sociocultural factors:
In the majority of the culture, especially in Christianity, the same sexual practice is
prohibited and hence, the LGBTQ often experience stigma, negligence, abuse from the health
care professionals. Moreover, being sexual minor, LGBTQ subjected to shame and fear and
hinder them to seek services. Moreover, the LGBTQ community have unique health care needs
due to different sexual orientation and social policies in United States failed to seek the services
(Solomon et al., 2017).
Behavioral factors:

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LGBTQ community highly involved in the addictions due to lack of accessibility to the
basic resources. They highly involve in suicidal behavior, tobacco smoking and unsafe sexual
practice which subjected them to high health risk. Since limited research has been conducted
regarding the treatment of LGBTQ, professionals failed to treat the patients of this community
(McInroy & Craig, 2017). Therefore, the lack of expertise resulted in limited access to health
care services.
Nursing interventions:
The common nursing interventions that can promote health care services include
 Increasing knowledge and skills about sexual orientations and gender identity can
provide access to care. Nursing professionals and other health care professionals can be
provided with training and research opportunities to increase knowledge (Clark, 2015).
 Health promotion can be designed where community members can be provided with
literacy so that can stigma can be reduced (Clark, 2015).
 Providing access to the services through advocacy, gender neural language and empathy
so that they can feel empowered and safe
 Nursing professionals are required to develop an empowered and welcoming
environment collaboratively with the community members so that health care access can
be provided.

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References:
Clark, M. J. (2015). Population and community health nursing (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson
Chapter 20
McInroy, L. B., & Craig, S. L. (2017). Perspectives of LGBTQ emerging adults on the depiction
and impact of LGBTQ media representation. Journal of Youth Studies, 20(1), 32-46.
Solomon, D. T., Heck, N., Reed, O. M., & Smith, D. W. (2017). Conducting culturally
competent intake interviews with LGBTQ youth. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and
Gender Diversity, 4(4), 403.