Issue
The National Committee for Vital and Health Statistics is a public advisory body to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The committee provides advice on health data issues related to community and population health, data use, and other issues.
Impact
Data are crucial to better understanding and addressing a range of issues impacting sexual and gender minority populations, such as persistent health disparities compared to non-sexual and gender minority populations. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services can remain a leader in collecting data on sexual and gender minority populations by ensuring that measures to identify the population are included across the agency’s data collection efforts.
Summary
The comment urges the Committee to advise and assist the Department of Health and Human Services in advancing collection of data about sexual and gender minority populations, as well as in analyzing, disseminating, and applying those data to inform health policies and programs. In particular, the comment acknowledges computational challenges with small area estimation for LGBT people given the low base rate and urges the Committee to support research that would address such challenges and make small-area estimation feasible.