The director of the National Institutes of Health’s Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office will speak at a lecture and student workshop at University of Pennsylvania next week.
Dr. Karen Parker will deliver an address Oct. 10 on NIH initiatives and again the following day about grant personship opportunities for students.
Parker formed the Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office in September 2015. It was a direct response to the 2011 NIH-commissioned Institute of Medicine Report, which highlighted opportunities where NIH could support the LGBT community.
Parker noted the office’s research has “big concerns” about HIV/AIDS in the population, specifically among the trans community, as well as issues relating to mental health, including anxiety, depression and suicide.
“There are so many other things where we’re not even sure if there are disparities and so we’re trying to increase research to better understand those areas,” Parker added.
She also noted higher rates of smoking, substance abuse and alcohol abuse among sexual and gender minorities.
“We want to better understand the interventions that we can do to be more effective within sexual- and gender-minority populations,” Parker said. “But there are many unanswered questions across the lifecourse and across different disease conditions. That is one of the reasons why NIH established our office, so we could really work across the agency to increase research in this area.”
Parker noted NIH has made strides over the past few years in expanding research into LGBT health disparities.
“This is a priority at NIH,” Parker said. “We now have an office [and] a strategic plan that spans the entire agency that focuses on SGM health research. People at their institutions can make a career in SGM health research. Since NIH is such a huge funder of biomedical research, I think it’s a good signal to the community to say we are interested in this work and we value the research questions that you have.”
Dr. Karen Parker will speak Oct. 10-11 at the University of Pennsylvania. Visit http://bit.ly/2yGyT2y for locations and times and to register.