Michele J. Eliason, PhD
Peggy L. Chinn, RN, PhD, FAAN

The purpose of this book is to serve as an introduction to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) health issues for practicing healthcare professionals, to offer healthcare professionals tools for creating safer and more inclusive environments for the people they serve, and to create a more humane workplace for LGBTQ healthcare workers. The book provides a broad overview of the issues that are shared among those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, or queer, but does not provide detailed information on how to care for each specific population. When we wrote the first edition in the mid-2000s, there was much less information available on any aspect of LGBTQ health except for sexual health and some aspects of mental health. That is rapidly changing, but in our second edition, we decided to stay with our original intent to offer foundational information on LGBTQ concepts, terminology, and health disparities that cut across the subsets of the LGBTQ population. In spite of burgeoning research that documents health disparities, the research literature still lacks information on interventions and we still cannot say definitively what effect an LGBTQ inclusive healthcare setting would have on health outcomes. There is still much work to be done.

This second edition has 14 chapters, compared to the 10 in the first edition. Because sexual orientation questions have been added to many national and state level health surveillance instruments, we have much more information on health disparities than previously, so we divided one chapter from the first edition on impact of stigma on health into three chapters, starting with impact of stigma on health and well-being in general, and then separate chapters on mental health (including substance abuse) and chronic physical health. We also divided a chapter on diversity within LGBTQ communities into two chapters: one focused on age/generational differences and one on other forms of intersecting identities that impact health.