Citation

Loewy KL. Am. J. Public Health 2017; 107(8): 1217-1218.

Affiliation

Karen L. Loewy is with Lambda Legal, New York, NY.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, American Public Health Association)

DOI

10.2105/AJPH.2017.303914

PMID

28657787

Abstract

On March 13, 2017, the Administration for Community Living (ACL) of the US Department of Health and Human Services published a request for comments in the Federal Register on the latest draft of the National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants (NSOAAP). The notice claimed that it sought comments “on a proposed extension with no changes of a currently approved collection,” but in fact this latest version of the tool used to assess program performance of recipients of funding under the Older Americans Act omitted a critical piece of data collection. During the three previous years, the NSOAAP had asked about participants’ sexual orientation. The newest draft does not.

The removal of this inquiry is extremely troubling. The federal data in the NSOAAP are critical for evaluating whether federally funded aging programs, including nutrition, transportation, case management, homemaker, and caregiver support services for seniors, accurately reflect the demographics of the United States. Failing to document whether these programs are meeting the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) seniors will result in ill-informed decisions about how to use limited public resources to meet the needs of older adults across the country. High-quality, accurate data that capture the diversity of the older adult community are essential to ensuring that LGBT older adults “count,” both in a literal sense and in terms of fundamental protections for a vulnerable population.

Language: en