In addition, 51 percent said they or a friend or family member who is also an LGBTQ person have experienced violence. The same percentage said they’d experienced sexual harassment, while 57 percent said they’d received threats or been subject to nonsexual harassment. In addition, just over a third, 34 percent, said they’d been harassed verbally in a bathroom.

“We see these extremely high numbers of interpersonal violence being reported by members of the LGBTQ community,” Casey said.

Within this population, Casey said, there are further disparities based on race. Black LGBTQ people had higher rates than whites of discrimination on the job and in interactions with police, and more often avoided calling police when in need because they were concerned about discrimination. Infectious disease rates are higher as well, Reisner said, with an estimated 50 percent of black transgender women suffering greatly from HIV.

Awareness of the differing health needs of the LGBTQ community is rising, panelists said. The National Institutes of Health has made the community a priority population for research into health disparities, which include an increased risk of adverse health outcomes at two to five times that of the general population, according to Reisner.

Panelists agreed that more data is needed on the health care needs of the LGBTQ population. They said questions about sexual orientation and gender identity should be added routinely to surveys to help illuminate those needs.

Mayer said one of the biggest hurdles this population faces involves how unprepared most medical professionals are to take care of them — despite a push to improve the health care industry’s “cultural competence” and better understand the everyday lives and pressures on ethnic and minority patients.

“The biggest challenge is that the health care system is woefully unprepared to take appropriate care of LGBTQ people,” Mayer said. “It’s a dawning idea that needs to gain traction, that there’s also a whole field of sexual-gender minority health that providers need to have an understanding of.”

Though providers often are reluctant to ask patients questions about sexual preference for fear of embarrassing them, Mayer said a recent survey said that 90 percent of patients don’t share that fear. A simple open question on registration forms — “Do you have sex with men, women, or both?” — can give a physician information and help establish communication that might prove important in understanding and treating health needs.

One reason for optimism, said Neel, is that medicine has “a learning attitude,” meaning many physicians — once they become aware that a need exists — extend effort to better care for patients, whatever their background.

Mayer said doctors may be motivated to educate themselves if it is emphasized that failing to ask about and consider sexuality isn’t just a missed opportunity to provide better care, but could be a prescription for worse care.

“I’m optimistic,” Mayer said. “The hook, and it’s the right hook for providers, is you’re going to do a better job providing patient care. Did you really go into this profession to do a bad job? I think if we can get people to understand that, that will help turn things around.”