QMass and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at UMass Medical School are hosting an LGBT health awareness event. Free and open to the public, “Caring for LGBT Patients” will take place Monday, May 4, from 2:15 to 3:45 p.m. in the Jacob Hiatt Auditorium.
Guest speaker Kevin Ard, MD, instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, is an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a member of the National LGBT Health Education Center at the Fenway Institute in Boston. Dr. Ard has written and lectured widely on LGBT health disparities, intimate partner violence in LGBT relationships and HIV prevention. His current interests include LGBT health education, the intersection of clinical medicine and public health, and the care of patients with HIV and hepatitis C.
His talk will focus on how to provide a more welcoming clinical environment for LGBT patients by providing more appropriate and sensitive care to this unique population.
“With this goal, we hope to move forward toward ending health care disparities affecting LGBT patients,” said first year School of Medicine student Joseph Homsi, a co-leader of the UMMS QMass student group. “We are pushing for more LGBTA health education at UMass Medical School, both through QMass and through a new optional enrichment elective that I am creating.”
Ard’s talk will address LGBT terminology, concepts and demographics; health disparities affecting LGBT populations and the role of discrimination/stigma in contributing to disparities; how to make clinical environments/encounters more welcoming for LGBT patients; and the management of specific clinical issues that affect some LGBT individuals, including HIV prevention with pre-exposure prophylaxis for men who have sex with men and hormone therapy for transgender individuals.
“We can show the world that UMass is an advocate for LGBT health education and rights, and that UMass is a welcoming place for all patients, students and clinicians,” said Homsi.
