The shortage of health care providers who are fully equipped to care for sexual and gender minorities underscores an immediate need for a national fellowship program. While researchers continue to expand and build a more solid evidence base for LGBTQ health concerns, mainstream media continues to report on the following staggering disparities faced by sexual and gender minorities:

• Individuals who identify as gay, lesbian, and transgender lack a consistent, reliable source of credible health care related information, espeically as it relates to conversion and reparative therapies, often causing a breakdown in communication.
• Gay men account for more than two thirds of all people diagnosed with HIV each year in the United States, despite comprising only 2% of the general population.
• Transgender people are 8 times more likely to report a suicide attempt in their life relative to cisgender people.
• Policies that permit the denial of services to LGBT people are linked to a 46% increase in the proportion of gay, lesbian and bisexual adults who report mental distress.
• LGBT seniors are more likely to have poor general health, more chronic conditions, higher rates of disability and more psychological distress.
• Lesbian and bisexual older women have higher rates of cardiovascular disease and are more likely than heterosexual women to have multiple chronic conditions.
• Bisexual and transgender adults are more likely to live in poverty, which heightens their risk for health care disparities and poor health