Health

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For Lesbian Victims of Domestic Violence, Competent Care Is Scarce

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Claire, a 25-year-old Los Angeles resident, distinctly remembers the night she and her ex-girlfriend broke up. “She was strangling me in a CVS parking lot,” Claire recalls, adding how she was gasping for air as bystanders looked on. “I made eye contact with one man who just kept walking, and we were right behind a car that was trying to reverse out of a parking spot. No one got out of the car. They didn’t honk; they didn’t do anything.” Claire, who asked to use a pseudonym due to safety concerns regarding her ex, says she managed to fight her […]

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For LGBTQ+ youth, vaping is becoming a dangerous coping mechanism

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It’s long been known that the bullying LGBTQ+ people face in their youth can have lifelong health ramifications, but a new study is finding this type of social rejection may have a particularly impactful effect on vaping rates. Previous research has shown that LGBTQ+ people tend to vape at disproportionately high rates compared to their straight and cisgender peers, with 22% of gay men and lesbians and 18% of bisexuals vaping, compared to 15% of straight people. But according to a new study published in the journal of Prevention Science, LGBTQ+ youth may exhibit high rates of e-cigarette and vape usage because of […]

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23 Blue States Sue Over Sexual Healthcare Grants

Courthouse News reports: A coalition of 23 states sued the Trump administration Thursday over a conservative overhaul of the nation’s only federal grant program for family planning, calling the new restrictions unconstitutional. “Supporting programs that provide options and education about family planning is critical to helping people, especially women, make informed decisions about their own bodies and improve their social and economic futures,” wrote Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, one of the 23 litigants, in a press release Thursday. “The Trump administration has chosen to politicize the Title X program, jeopardizing funding for a broad range of reproductive and sexual healthcare […]

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LGBTQ+ adults are delaying getting healthcare for 2 alarming reasons

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LGBTQ+ adults are significantly more likely to face challenges accessing and paying for necessary healthcare, according to a new survey released last Thursday from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a health policy research non-profit. Out of over 2,600 LGBTQ+ adults surveyed, 58% said they skipped or postponed necessary healthcare in the past year compared to 38% of non-LGBTQ+ people. The two main reasons included costs and inability to get an appointment. Even among those with health insurance and those who make more than $100,000 a year, LGBTQ+ people were more likely to say they skipped or delayed care in the past year. […]

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What queer people should know about the ‘diarrhea parasite’ ruining our summer salads

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Big gay salads are the spice of life when it comes to summer living, but queer people can’t have anything under this administration — not even fresh produce and a sense of unadulterated whimsy at the farmers market. It’s no secret that the Trump administration’s defunding of institutions that previously kept us healthy, such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH), has had widespread consequences, now including a parasite that loves to live on fresh produce and causes watery diarrhea. If you’re looking at that bag of salad mix sitting in your fridge a little more suspiciously, […]

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Four Million Have Lost Obamacare So Far This Year

NOTUS reports: Four million Americans dropped out of Affordable Care Act insurance marketplaces in their first month of coverage this year, largely for failing to pay monthly premiums. The decline — far larger than in previous years — reflects the sticker shock felt by millions as premiums rose by double digits after congressional Republicans allowed for extra pandemic-era federal subsidies to expire in December. Democrats are likely to seize on the figures released Friday to blame Republicans for higher health care costs ahead of the midterms. Democrats seeking House and Senate majorities this year have adopted health care affordability as a […]

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Cleveland Clinic to promote ‘detransition’ services under DOJ settlement

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Trans advocates in Ohio have condemned a federal settlement that the US Department of Justice announced on 6 June, saying Cleveland Clinic will put $2 million into no-cost “detransition” services and actively publicise them while continuing to refuse gender-affirming care for minors. Dara Adkison, executive director of TransOhio, criticised the health system’s decision to comply with the settlement, saying: “Cleveland Clinic, once a highly respected medical institution, continues to show that maintaining medical integrity is no longer their priority by jumping to the front of the line to comply not with science and medicine, but with cruelty and anti-trans hate.” Under the […]

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Trump admin eliminates health care programs for LGBTQ+ veterans

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The Department of Veterans Affairs has ordered health facilities nationwide to eliminate gender identity-based initiatives and strip the LGBTQ+ designation from a network of medical coordinators created to help LGBTQ+ veterans navigate care, according to an internal memorandum obtained by The Advocate. The June 12 directive, signed by Veterans Health Administration Under Secretary for Health John J. Bartrum, the VA official who oversees the nation’s largest integrated health care system, is the latest move by the Trump administration to remove references to LGBTQ+ and transgender identities from federal programs. It also raises new questions about the future of a specialized support network the VA […]

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CDC Axes Page On How To Avoid Contracting Mpox

STAT News reports: HHS is again ordering changes to the CDC website that are at odds with the recommendations of the public health agency’s scientists. The CDC was told to take down a webpage that explained how people who have multiple sexual partners can reduce their risk of contracting mpox. Asked why, an HHS spokesperson said it “was not medically accurate” and didn’t “align with Administration priorities.” Demetre Daskalakis, a former top CDC scientist who served as deputy coordinator of the Biden administration’s mpox response, disputed the assertion that the information on the webpage was inaccurate. “Providing advice to people that […]

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A new strain of Shigella is disproportionately impacting queer men

Dr. Carlton Thomas, a gastroenterologist and host of the Butt Honestly podcast, knew something was wrong after having oral sex in the dark room play space of a Fort Lauderdale gay bar last year. Just a few days after returning home from the trip, he had developed diarrhea, dehydration, extreme fatigue, and a 104-degree fever.  As a gay GI doctor, Doctor Carlton, as his social media followers regard him, knew his symptoms could only be one thing: Shigella, an increasingly common bacterial infection that can spread through feces, usually via water contamination, unwashed hands, and, yes, certain types of sexual contact, especially […]

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