Discrimination against LGBTQ+ people throughout the U.S. and around the world contributes to LGBTQ+ health disparities. A new Harvard center wants to shift that paradigm.

The LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence, based at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and in partnership with Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, aims to advance health equity for LGBTQ people. Studies have shown that LGBTQ people suffer worse health than their peers, with higher prevalences of both mental health ailments, such as depression, and physical illnesses, including cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

In 2016, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recognized these significant and well-documented inequities by designating LGBTQ individuals as a health disparities population, opening the door for more research into the field. The result has been a marked increase in LGBTQ research—but Brittany Charlton, founding director of the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence, says that there is still much more work to be done.

“Just 1% of NIH-funded research is dedicated to LGBTQ health,” said Charlton, Harvard Medical School associate professor of population medicine at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard Chan School. “That is so out of step with the fact that one in 10 people in the U.S. are LGBTQ, and that that number is twice as high among young people.”

The LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence, which launched June 4 during Harvard Chan’s Pride Month celebration, aims to tackle this shortfall by committing to deepening research in the field. It intends to award pilot grants for LGBTQ health research, as well as support to existing studies examining the subject. Charlton says that specific attention must be paid to data collection. Since information about sexual orientation and gender identity are not routinely gathered as part of care for health care visits, quantifying health disparities faced by the LGBTQ population can be challenging for researchers; improved data collection will open up more opportunities for research.

Read the full article about LGBTQ+ health disparities by Jeff Sobotko at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.