Promoting health with Lesbian and bisexual women: It's not just about behaviour change

Aim and objectives: To highlight different ways that healthcare professionals can promote health and reduce health inequalities of lesbian and bisexual women using a health promotion framework that focusses on the wider healthcare context.

Background: Lesbian and bisexual women experience numerous health disparities that place them at high risk of poor health outcomes. The Frieden Health Impact Pyramid (2010) identifies five tiers of public health interventions. This pyramid could be used to promote health in lesbian and bisexual women in healthcare settings.

Design: A discursive paper.

Methods: Literature was searched from 2008 to 2015 using PubMed, ScienceDirect, and published grey literature. Individual key words were used to locate articles that focused on lesbian and bisexual women’s health inequalities and to identify interventions to address these.

Results: Examples are presented across the tiers of the Health Impact Pyramid in the context of healthcare settings that healthcare practitioners could action to promote health in lesbian and bisexual women.

Conclusions: The use of the Frieden triangle offers an alternative way to promote health by conceptualizing health promotion interventions that promote lesbian and bisexual women without just focusing on behaviour change. The importance of changing areas of practice in healthcare organizations to be more supportive of lesbian and bisexual women and their healthcare needs is highlighted.

Relevance to clinical practice: This paper highlights ways that healthcare professionals can promote health of lesbian and bisexual women within their healthcare practice to help reduce health disparities.