By: Michael Girouard
MD/MBA Candidate Class of 2020
Harvard Medical School & Harvard Business School

Opioid use disorder (OUD) has reached alarming rates in the United States. As a clerkship student rotating through the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (a Harvard teaching affiliate), I was struck by how this illness was affecting more and more of my patients as the year progressed. Having a passion for and prior experience in LGBTQ health, I wondered specifically how OUD was affecting the LGBTQ community, a community known to be disproportionately affected by other substance use disorders.

Were LGBTQ people more likely to have OUD than their sexual and gender majority counterparts? What was the interplay between OUD and HIV, and how did that relate to sexual risk in this population? Were there particular drug interactions between OUD treatment medications, such as buprenorphine and methadone, and hormone replacement therapy? And finally, how might we use existing behavioral health frameworks to improve the experience and efficacy of treatment of OUD in the LGBTQ community?

These were the questions that I was asking myself as I embarked on an enriching research journey with my mentor, Dr. Alex Keuroghlian, and our collaborator, Hilary Goldhammer, as part of my HMS Scholars in Medicine Scholar Project. Please take a look below to see what we found!

Link here: https://www.lgbthealtheducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/OpioidUseAmongLGBTQPopulations.pdf.

And here: https://aidsetc.org/resource/addressing-opioid-use-disorder-among-lgbtq-populations