An LGBTQIA+ Symposium to Improve Care for Sexual and Gender Minority Youth
Submitted by Marvin So on Apr 4, 2021 - 12:02pm CDT
Background and Objectives: Multilevel factors drive health disparities experienced by sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations. We developed a 3-hour symposium focusing on care for SGM youth to address this. The symposium was a free, extracurricular event open to the public, with an emphasis on health professional students and providers from all disciplines and involved interprofessional didactic and interactive components.
Methods: Participants completed optional retrospective pre/postsurveys immediately and 10 months postsymposium. Surveys contained Likert-scale questions addressing five indicators of symposium effectiveness related to knowledge, confidence, and comfort in providing care for SGM populations. We used 1-tailed paired t tests to evaluate the effectiveness of the symposium, and analysis of variance tests to compare differences by professional role.
Results: Of 208 individuals who attended the symposium, 67 completed the initial survey, and 23 completed the 10-months postsymposium survey. Participants reported significantly higher (P<.001) scores across all five measures of effectiveness from pre- to immediately postsymposium, and remained at significantly higher (P<.05) scores across all measures from presymposium to 10 months postsymposium, except for comfort recommending care for SGM pediatric patients or clients.
Conclusion: Results suggest that the symposium improved participants’ perceived effectiveness in serving SGM pediatric patients, although selection bias is a concern. Dissemination of educational approaches that incorporate interprofessional didactic and active learning components may help improve workforce capacity to improve SGM health.
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