The mission of the Center for Research on Health and Sexual Orientation is to understand and improve the health of sexual minority (i.e. gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) individuals by maintaining an infrastructure that provides research on sexual minority health/wellness needs. This mission will be accomplished through the following goals:
- Produce quality empirical research to add to the small and primarily anecdotal body of literature regarding health and wellness of sexual minorities
- Stimulate collaborative and interdisciplinary research in sexual minority health and wellness;
- Conserve research resources through these collaborative efforts,
- Provide a supportive network for scientists outside the Center to further their research in sexual minority health and wellness issues,
- Create and maintain contact with non-researchers interested in and working with sexual minority health/wellness issues (e.g. practitioners and consumers) to assist in developing realistic and appropriate research agendas and applying research findings,
- Translate research findings into education, policy and services at national, statewide, and local levels by creating linkages with medical practices and local and state offices in the Department of Health that serve this population,
- Assist our medical center to meet the standards necessary to better serve members of this population and to work with them to create a cohort of patients for research,
- Assist faculty at the Graduate School of Public Health and other schools at the University to add issues related to this population to their curricula, and
- Develop a five-year plan to bring in faculty with expertise in the area and to organize a formal network via conferences and the web of public health researchers working in the field.