HuffingtonPost.com – Ross Levi and Somjen Frazer
With all the media coverage lately around Gay Pride events, as well as around marriage equality, it is ironic that so little is really known about the lives and health needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. This lack of specific information on the LGBT community is not just an academic problem; policymakers, especially those in government, demand real numbers to document the existence of problems. This is particularly true in these tough economic times, as funders, government officials and state agencies rightly demand efficient programs that are targeted like laser beams on specific, documented problems. In this context as with so many things, knowledge equals power: the power to allocate resources and work to fix these problems.