Third-year medical students Jason Lambrese and Andrea Lach Dean: “Leading the way” in bringing equality to health care for the LGBT community.

Medical students honored for creating LGBTIQ health awareness course

Jason Lambrese and Andrea Lach Dean saw a need to sensitize future physicians to the health concerns of lesbian, gay, and transgendered people. The course they designed, which premiered at Brown in 2007, has won a national honor.
By Anne Diffily  |  May 13, 2009  |  Email to a friend

The American Medical Student Association (AMSA) and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA) have jointly honored two Brown third-year medical students, Jason Lambrese ’06 and Andrea Lach Dean, for their creation of a preclinical elective course for first- and second-year medical students that examines the particular healthcare concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexed, and queer patients.

“Gender and Sexuality in Healthcare: Caring for ALL Patients” was first offered by Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School in the fall of 2007 and was repeated again last fall. “U.S. medical schools are doing a poor job of teaching about LGBTIQ healthcare concerns,” Lambrese explains. “Andrea and I are hoping to change that.” 

The course designed by the two students consisted of eight two-hour sessions featuring lectures by local physicians, researchers, and activists who are experts in the field, with complementary reading and written assignments. They were advised on the project by faculty members Julie Taylor (family medicine), Edward Feller (community health), and Richard Dollase (Biomed medical education).

“The students at Brown did an incredible job of creating … innovative and sustainable programming,” said Laura Erickson-Schroth, chair of the AMSA Committee on Gender and Sexuality. Her endorsement was seconded by Joel Ginsburg, GLMA’s executive director, who noted, “These students are leading the way to a future in which LGBT patients receive care that’s as good as anyone else receives.”

Some of the topics examined in the Brown course are the importance of effective communication skills, including gender-neutral language about family and domestic life; and gender-neutral intake forms – “Don’t only ask ‘married or single’,” Lambrese says. “Include ‘partnered,’ as well.” Other specific health issues the course examines are the increased prevalence of psychiatric issues in the LGBTIQ community; unique psychosocial stressors such as fear, harassment, and hate crimes; Hepatitis A and B vaccines; and PAP smears.

Next year Lambrese hopes to identify other curricular opportunities for raising awareness about LGBTIQ healthcare. “We hope to take the material that we included in our elective course,” he says, “and integrate it into the standard required curriculum.”