Nationwide Study Launched to Identify Disparities Among LGBTQ+ Patients

A nationwide study is being launched by Moffitt Cancer Center to help educate oncologists and address health care disparities among LGBTQ+ patients.

The findings from this study are intended to inform the Curriculum for Oncologists on LGBTQ+ populations to Optimize Relevance and Skills (COLORS) Training Program, which Moffitt developed in 2018. The program is designed to help oncologists better understand the unique challenges facing LGBTQ+ patients.

“We developed the COLORS Training Program after a nationwide survey led by our team revealed that a majority of oncologists say they are comfortable treating LGBTQ+ patients, but only half are confident they understand the health needs of that patient population. And the number drops dramatically when asked about transgender patients,” Matthew Schabath, PhD, principal investigator of the nationwide study and associate member in the Cancer Epidemiology Program at Moffitt, said in a press release. “We are excited to expand our national study to develop new and better educational resources for oncologists across the US, and most importantly, to be able to provide quality care to the LGBTQ+ patient community.”

For this study, approximately 2000 oncologists, selected at random from the American Medical Association database, will be invited to participate in the training, with the goal of enlisting 600 doctors over the course of 6 months. The oncologists will be randomized into 2 study arms consisting of COLORS training or general LGBTQ+ health education training. Participating doctors will then be surveyed following their 2-hour online training and will also receive continuing medical education credit.

Currently, the study is scheduled to begin in October. Once the trial has been completed, the training will be made available to all medical oncologists for continuing medical education and adapted for additional health care professionals, such as nurses and physician assistants.

In an interview with CancerNetwork®, Schabath discussed the study further and what he hopes the resulting program will accomplish.

This segment comes from the CancerNetwork® portion of the MJH Life Sciences Medical World News, airing daily on all MJH Life Sciences channels.

Reference:

Moffitt Cancer Center Study Educates Oncologists on LGBTQ+ Health Concerns [news release]. Tampa, Florida. Published September 21, 2020. Accessed September 28, 2020. https://moffitt.org/newsroom/press-release-archive/2020/moffitt-cancer-center-study-educates-oncologists-on-lgbtqplus-health-concerns/