By M.R.F. Buckley
When Neal Baer was attending Harvard Medical School in the 1990s, he says there were only two out gay students in his class and next to nothing was ever mentioned about LGBTQ health.
Baer received his degree in 1996 and became a pediatrician, an adjunct professor of preventive medicine at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, and an award-winning television writer and producer, working on successful TV shows such as China Beach and ER. He eventually became executive producer and showrunner of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Under the Dome.
More than 20 years after he graduated, however, Baer returned to HMS in 2016 to speak to medical and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning) students, and when he asked them how much exposure they had had to LGBTQ health issues in medical school, most still said very little.