The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released its 2014 report on department-wide activities focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals and populations. Since 2011, HHS has issued these annual reports through its LBGT Issues Coordinating Committee. In releasing the report today, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced that Matt Hines, MD, Director of Provider and LGBT Outreach, and Wanda Jones, DrPH the Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health, will join Kathy Greenlee, Assistant Secretary for Aging and Administrator of the Administration for Community Living. as members of the LGBT Issues Coordinating Committee.
Among the planned activities for the current federal fiscal year 2015:
+ A Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services regulation to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in the provision of services by Medicare and Medicaid-funded hospitals
+ A department-level regulation to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity by HHS grantees
+ A strategic plan from the National Institutes of Health for sexual and gender minority health research, which will align with the recommendations issued by the Institute of Medicine in 2011
+ Addition of questions on gender identity by the Health Resources and Services Administration in the 2014 Health Center Patient Survey
+ Addition of a question on sexual orientation by the Administration for Community Living in the National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants
+ Addition of questions on sexual orientation by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health
+ Addition of a question on gender identity in the Population Assessment of Tobacco Health Study (funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration)
+ Pretesting of a question on sexual orientation by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for addition in the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey
Ignatius Bau 