The PRIDE Study will be the largest LGBT health study and it will be conducted on an iPhone app, thus utilizing modern technology for the sake of science.
Whether we like it or not, whether we want to admit it or not, there are many personal traits that we display that make us different, especially when it comes to our health issues. Some of these defining traits are our sexual orientation and our sexual conduct, because they greatly define what risk points we encounter in our usual activity and therefore they are greatly linked to the health issues we might develop along the line.
Unfortunately, too little is known about the risk factors that the LGBT community encounters on a regular basis and moreover, our knowledge regarding how these rick factors affects them is extremely limited. It is time to change that, as we step forward into a more evolved community, that is letting go of its prejudice.
There are too many cases when members of the LGBT community do not fit into the statistics that they are included in by gender only. Therefore, they cannot receive a proper medical assessment and some important details just might slip beneath the cracks of a misguided medical system. Transgender people are probably the most mysterious members of the LGBT group, as their physiology and physiopathology still holds many insufficient features.
Furthermore, the discrimination of the LGBT community in a medical facility is extremely unethical. However, there are too many such cases that end in the harassment of these patients and even more importantly, they end with them leaving hospitals without the proper treatment if any. This is a particularly grave matter, as it makes them avoid seeking medical help in the future.
This is what the PRIDE Study wants to put an end to. It is meant to gather a massive amount of data about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, so that a wide variety of statistics could be conducted that will help doctors to perform better medical examinations and researchers to develop specific treatments for specific disease manifestation that they have.
The PRIDE Study will be an extensive survey that will gather information regarding HIV/AIDS, cancer, obesity, smoking and mental health conditions ranging from depression to many other more complicated diseases. Thus, it will provide the baseline for a wide variety of sociology and medical research that will be conducted in the near future.
The fact that the study will employ an iPhone app provides immense accessibility to the survey, because people will be able to take it from in the comfort of their chosen location, rather than a specialized facility. Furthermore, this will make the results more reliable, because the people taking the survey will be less tempted to lie about issues that they might feel ashamed of admitting to in public.
The PRIDE Study app will be released this month, because June is LGBT Pride Month. It will be available a few days before the annual Pride Parade in San Francisco, where numerous awareness campaigns regarding the project will be conducted.
This app and this entire study have the potential of providing more personalized medicine for all of us, regardless of sex and sexual orientation. The PRIDE Study constitutes a great step forward towards a world where we can be free and true to ourselves, our defining traits and our choices.
Image Source: imore.com/
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