Information Needs for an Online Resource for LGBTQ+ Young People: Mental Health, Sexual Health, and Navigating Services

Abstract

Gender and sexual-minority youth have unique health needs that are often underserved by institutions such as school sex education curricula and health-care providers. In this paper, we describe our ongoing work to address these disparities with the collaborative development of health resources, emphasizing mental and sexual health for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer and/or questioning (LGBTQ+) youth. Our community partner is the Community Health Access Initiative (CHAI) at the University of Michigan. The goal of CHAI is to improve and support LGBTQ+ young people’s health through improving access to affirming health care. With this collaboration between CHAI and social-computing researchers, we are in the process of developing an online resource for LGBTQ+ youth providing comprehensive health-education information. In this paper, we describe part of our research and design process and also present topics that participants identified as vital to include in a resource such as this intended website. The idea for a website resulted from CHAI’s Action Committee, a group of LGBTQ+ young-adult advisors to the project, who identified a serious need for relevant and inclusive health information that they and their peers struggled to find online and offline. While the current CHAI website includes substantial resources and references to services, CHAI is looking for further ways the site can meet LGBTQ+ young people’s needs. For instance, the site could include more comprehensive resources, ranging from mental health to physical services. Additionally, the site aims to improve how resources are organized to optimize usability, navigability, and accessibility.