Alcohol and other drug (AOD) treatment services in Australia must begin collecting data about the sexuality and gender identity of clients or the treatment needs, experiences and outcomes of LGBTQ people will continue to remain largely invisible, according to AOD and LGBTQ health advocates in a new journal article.
The peer-reviewed paper titled 'The sector is ready, and the community needs Australian alcohol and other drug treatment services to ask about sexuality and gender identity', and to be published in the Drug and Alcohol Review, argues that the recent publication of the '2020 Standard' by the Australian Bureau of Statistics paves the way for the meaningful inclusion of LGBTQ people within routinely collected AOD service data.
The '2020 Standard' outlines how to record and collect information about sex, gender, variations of sex characteristics and sexual orientation.
Nicolas Parkhill, CEO of ACON, NSW's leading LGBTQ health organisation, said that the accurate collection of sexuality and gender diverse data was critical to the provision of effective and meaningful AOD support services for LGBTQ communities.
"It is critical that members of our communities have the opportunity to share clinically important information about their sexuality and gender identity across all health settings," Parkhill said.
"Given longstanding and comprehensive Australian and international evidence indicating that sexuality and gender diverse people have unique service and information needs when it comes to alcohol and other drugs, we need AOD treatment services to routinely record data about our communities."
Reflecting on the publication of the 2020 Standard earlier this year, Parkhill added: "The need to routinely collect sexuality and gender data within services has long been an urgent need. Prior to the publication of the 2020 Standard data inclusion was considered too difficult.
"The need to collect sexuality and gender data remains urgent however thanks to the publication of the 2020 Standard, this data collection is now achievable. Minimum datasets must now incorporate the 2020 Standard, to enable services to start collecting data on sexuality and gender."
University of Sydney Associate Professor Julie Mooney-Somers, who specialises in LGBTQ health and AOD research and is a co-author of the Drug and Alcohol Review
