Success of a Student Organized Gender and Sexuality Seminar Series

BACKGROUND: The lack of medical school education on lesbian, gay, bisexual, andtransgender (LGBT) health contributes to explicit and implicit bias anddiscrimination against LGBT patients. This results in health disparities amonggender and sexual minority (GSM) populations and can lead to worse healthoutcomes. New York Medical College students organized a Gender and Sexuality inMedicine seminar series to increase medical student education, reduce bias, andultimately, improve patient outcomes. OBJECTIVES: This study aims to improve medical student uency in sex, gender,and reproductive health and prepare medical students to treat LGBT patients in acompassionate and knowledgeable way. METHODS/RESEARCH: We advertised a Gender and Sexuality in Medicine seminar series to medical students via email and asked all participants to completean anonymous online pre-course survey. Content area experts presented seminarson PrEP/HIV, LGBT mental health, and puberty suppression in transgenderchildren, among other topics. Students then completed an anonymous online post-course survey to assess the eectiveness of individual lectures and the seminarseries overall. CONCLUSIONS/IMPACT: 59 first and second year medical students completedthe lecture series, with 76% of attendees identifying as female and 24% identifying as male. This illustrates strong student interest in and demand for education onthese topics, particularly amongst female students. Additionally, attendeesexpressed an increased level of comfort in their ability to ask patients questionsregarding gender and sexuality. The largest increase in comfort was for recognizingfemale genital cutting, counseling patients on HIV prevention, and discussingsexual violence with patients. High lecture satisfaction ratings, voluntary student participation, and increases in comfort level indicate the series was effective in addressing health disparities among GSM patients. This also suggests GSM topicsshould be integrated into the standard preclinical curriculum.https://jdc.jefferson.edu/sexandgenderhealth/1002/thumbnail.jp