Researchers at the University of California are launching an incredibly ambitious effort to study gay, bisexual, and transgender men and women using the iPhone.
An ambitious new study on the health of gay, bisexual, and transgender men and women will be launched using a new app on the iPhone.
Researchers from the University of California are spearheading the effort, dubbed “PRIDE for Population Research in Identity and Disparities for Equality,” and its focus will be to learn more about the risk factors and outcomes for a wide range of diseases including HIV/AIDS, cancer, depression, and obesity among tens of thousands of people — assuming they can get that many to sign up, according to a Washington Post report.
Specifically, scientists want to understand the relationship between being LGBT or LGBTQ and mental and physical health.
Studies have found that there are definitely some disparities between sexual minority groups and straight individuals, but the data so far isn’t that extensive. Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn’t start using sexual orientation as a data point until just two years ago.
Volunteers will be able to sign up by downloading the app on their phones and then filling out an enrollment form and including demographic information. It can also be done via laptop, and the sign-up process takes around 10 to 15 minutes.
After that, there will be a more detailed questionnaire that will take in the area of 30 minutes.
This will not be a short study: scientists expect it to last decades, and may be more of an ambitious data-gathering project than anything else than a focused, short-term study.
The PRIDE app is just one of many different apps being unveiled by Apple and the organization ResearchKit that hopes to improve data collection and research to assist the medical community. Apps are already available for tracking heart disease, breast cancer, and diabetes, to name a few.
