The following background and issue brief from the Center for Consumer Engagement in Health Innovation promotes cultural competency training for aging service providers on the unique needs of LGBTQ older adults.

Though the world has gotten more tolerant toward people who identify as LGBTQ, significant fear and barriers still exist in the health system, particularly for LGBTQ older adults. When you couple this fear with providers ill-equipped to handle the unique needs of LGBTQ older adults, you have a health system that allows these consumers to fall through the cracks.

To help address some of these barriers, the Center for Consumer Engagement in Health Innovation has put together a new issue brief, authored by staff members at SAGE, about the importance of training aging service providers on the unique needs of LGBTQ older adults and on meeting those needs in a culturally competent manner. This brief describes SAGE’s cultural competency training program and shares a case study of how this training helped one large provider organization, Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY).

The Center also produced a video in collaboration with SAGE in 2017, “The Main Thing: Respect,” which includes older adults in this population sharing their perspectives on this topic.

Read the Brief here.