Researchers at University of California, San Francisco are launching a study to better understand the health of LGBTQ adults in the country and are using Apple's ResearchKit's platform to do so.
The study, The Population Research in Identity and Disparities for Equality Study, seeks to understand factors related to health and diseases among LGBTQ adults.
The app for the study is hosted on ResearchKit; it launched Thursday. Participants who download the app then answer questions and surveys about their health.
The study is broken down into two phases, the first being a "community listening" phase to gather basic demographic and census data to better understand the population and their health concerns and priorities. Next will be a traditional longitudinal cohort study, expected to begin in the next six to nine months.
"The LGBTQ community has been understudied and underserved in healthcare settings," said Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, MD, PhD, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the UCSF School of Medicine and director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations, in a statement. "This timely study helps fill the gap in our understanding of health and disease risk in this population, and importantly involves and engages members of these communities in this health-related research in important and novel ways."
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