Expanding Knowledge About Cultural Competence and Affirming Behavioral Health Care in the LGBTQ+ Adolescent Population

Abstract

Purpose: The primary purpose of this quality improvement project was to expand the knowledge of behavioral healthcare providers about LGBTQ+ adolescents by providing an educational intervention and community resources to encourage competent and affirming behavioral health care. Background: LGBTQ+ adolescents face numerous barriers to health care access and often avoid seeking care due to fear of discrimination and may avoid disclosing their sexual orientation or gender identity. For behavioral healthcare providers to give practical, compassionate, holistic, and evidence-based care to LGBTQ+ adolescents, they must be aware of pertinent issues impacting LGBTQ+ communities. Therefore, they must be well educated regarding this population’s unique health care needs and the social struggles they face as sexual and gender minorities. Methods: This quality improvement project was a pretest-posttest quantitative design with an educational intervention in the form of an asynchronous education module. The module discussed evidence-based recommendations for providing culturally competent and affirming care to LGBTQ+ adolescents. A resource toolkit containing a handout of local and national resources for providers, patients, their families, a downloadable version of the educational presentation, and a handout of current terminology was provided at the end of the presentation. Results: Results of the knowledge-based questions revealed that providing an education intervention did expand the knowledge of the participants. Pre-education survey results showed that only one question (12.5%) was answered correctly by all twelve participants in the knowledge-based questions. Post-test findings of the same knowledge-based questions showed that 6 answered all the questions correctly (75%). The overall findings between the two surveys showed a 62.5% increase in correct answers between pre- and post-education findings. Insight was gained on perceived barriers to culturally competent care from open-ended questions in the post-education survey. Conclusion: Knowledgeable and affirming behavioral health care providers can help eliminate barriers to care and promote positive patient experiences for this population. Therefore, adequate education should be available for the behavioral healthcare provider to feel comfortable and knowledgeable to provide holistic, evidence-based, and culturally competent care to LGBTQ+ adolescents.