Preventive care is critical to improving outcomes in chronic diseases—including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer—which kill 7 in 10 Americans annually, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.

But members of the LGBTQ+ community face unique challenges when it comes to preventive care, from gaps in their awareness and confidence to inadequacies in their healthcare providers’ education and training. While LGBTQ+ patients are more likely than others to say they intend to seek preventive care for conditions associated with the LGBTQ+ community, such as HIV, these patients are far less likely to say they intend to seek it for conditions such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or cancer, according to data Phreesia Life Sciences and Klick Health collected from more than 1,500 patients in early 2022 as they were checking in for their doctor’s appointments.

These results suggest pharma marketers have room to explore new ways to help close educational gaps and support LGBTQ+ patients in accessing preventive care.

LGBTQ+ Patients Face Barriers to Preventive Care

Many LGBTQ+ patients have experienced negative interactions that have left them feeling unsafe or uncomfortable in healthcare settings. A 2020 survey from the Center from American Progress found that 15% of LGBTQ+ patients, including 28% of transgender patients, said they had postponed or avoided medical care because of discrimination, and 16% of respondents reported postponing or avoiding preventive screenings for the same reason.

Perhaps as a result, just two-thirds (66%) of LGBTQ+ patients surveyed by Phreesia and Klick said they have a strong understanding of preventive care, and one-quarter (25%) said they feel “not at all confident” that they know what preventive screenings they might currently need.

“There are specific problems facing the LGBTQ+ community, such as experiences with discrimination in healthcare, that cause delays in or avoiding care altogether,” says Thea Briggs, Associate Director, Content Strategy, Phreesia Life Sciences. “This is both a lost opportunity to provide care as well as raise awareness about preventive items that might be coming up.”

LGBTQ+ patients also face accessibility and affordability challenges—such as higher rates of being either uninsured or underinsured—that hurt their ability to be proactive about their health. Just 28% of surveyed LGBTQ+ patients report that preventive care is completely covered by their insurance compared with 48% of the total surveyed population. Furthermore, 14% of surveyed LGBTQ+ patients don’t have insurance at all, which is well above the 3% of all surveyed patients who fall into that category.

Physicians Need More Education

Another potential reason members of the LGBTQ+ community are falling behind with preventive care screenings is lack of awareness, since many LGBTQ+ patients say their providers are not mentioning these services to them. When asked which screenings their doctor recommended to them over the past two years, surveyed LGBTQ+ patients listed HIV (30%), sexually transmitted diseases (33%), and depression (25%) as the three most-recommended screening suggestions for all LGBTQ+ patients.

However, well below half of eligible LGBTQ+ patients say their providers have recommended routine cancer checks, including colorectal cancer screening (recommended to 40% of eligible surveyed LGBTQ+ patients) and cervical cancer screenings (recommended to 24% of eligible surveyed LGBTQ+ patients). And 67% of LGBTQ+ patients said their doctor never brought up cancer screenings, including 48% of LGBTQ+ patients over 45 years old.

To help LGBTQ+ patients incorporate more life-saving preventive health measures into their care, it’s critical that physicians focus on whole-person health rather than restricting their LGBTQ+ screening recommendations to a handful of conditions for which this population is thought to be higher risk, explains Amy Gómez, PhD, SVP, Diversity Strategy, Klick.

“As healthcare marketers, we can support physicians in this effort by raising awareness of the LGBTQ+ screening gap and by providing tactical support,” she says. “For example, we could offer patient discussion guides for our providers to better support them in their conversations with their LGBTQ+ patients and to model having bias-free, non-judgmental conversations that cover all of their medical and preventive care needs.”

Because physicians are a trusted patient resource for health information, making them aware of the LGBTQ+ screening recommendations gap and educating them about the importance of routine screening reminders for all patients can help improve LGBTQ+ screening rates while also establishing their office as a safe and respectful go-to source for preventive care information.

“There is a special kind of access to consider that is specific to the LGBTQ+ community,” Briggs says. “Even if you’ve made it to the doctor’s office, if you’re not able to have open and transparent conversations with the HCP—or they don’t offer affirming care—you may not be having the right conversations about which preventive care items you really need or should be considering.”

What Marketers Can Do

In addition to helping foster transparency and thoughtfulness within provider-patient interactions, pharma marketers must also acknowledge the lack of representation and understanding the LGBTQ+ community perceives within the pharma industry. Just 45% of surveyed LGBTQ+ patients believe that pharma understands their unique needs, and 57% disagree that the industry does sufficient LGBTQ+ outreach beyond HIV and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medications that high-risk individuals take to prevent getting HIV.

Pharma marketing efforts that incorporate outreach to the LGBTQ+ community and are inclusive of these patients’ experiences can help messaging better resonate and therefore expand usage of crucial services such as preventive screenings, explains David Linetsky, Phreesia’s Senior Vice President, Life Sciences.

“We’re proud to be using our platform to connect with members of the LGBTQ+ community to learn from them directly about their experiences in navigating and accessing healthcare,” he says. “Our hope is that the insights we generate from this work will help advance and guide efforts among providers and pharma manufactures to address biases and create more equitable healthcare experiences for these communities.”

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