This year’s annual LGBT Health Awareness Week, sponsored by the National Coalition for LGBT Health, was full of exciting news. The Department of Health and Human Services released a directive outlining a wide array of new and existing initiatives focused on the health of LGBT people and their families, and the Institute of Medicine released its long-awaited report, “The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Better Understanding.” The National Coalition for LGBT Health also teamed up with the Center for American Progress to release a new report: “Changing the Game: What Health Care Reform Means for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Americans,” by Kellan Baker and Jeff Krehely.

This report discusses the Affordable Care Act’s impact on LGBT people, which includes benefits such as help for uninsured LGBT people to access insurance coverage. Because LGBT people and their families are regularly discriminated against in employment, relationship recognition, and insurance, they are roughly twice as likely as the general population to be uninsured, and LGBT people are disproportionately likely to live in poverty. Thanks to the law, many previously uninsured LGBT people will soon be able to afford vital coverage through expanded Medicaid eligibility and the new health insurance exchanges.

A strong Patient’s Bill of Rights is already protecting access to coverage and care by prohibiting dollar limits on coverage and making sure that no one is vulnerable to losing vital coverage because of illness. The Affordable Care Act is also key to efforts such as expanding cultural competency in the health care workforce to include LGBT issues, making preventive care available to everyone who needs it, improving data collection to better identify and address health disparities, and recognizing the increasing diversity of America’s families. Same-sex couples live in almost every county across the United States, and more than one million of these couples are raising children. These families need the same protections as any other family to ensure that parents and partners can fulfill their commitment to keeping each other and their children safe and healthy.

Despite these and other benefits for the LGBT community, the impact of the Affordable Care Act on LGBT people and their families remains largely unexplored. This report provides an overview of the health disparities experienced by LGBT people, followed by a brief discussion of several provisions of the Affordable Care Act that hold particular promise for improving the health and well-being of the LGBT community. The report continues into an investigation of four major areas where efforts by LGBT advocates and their allies in each state will be key to ensuring that the new health law expands access to health care and promotes health and wellbeing for LGBT people and their families when the law is fully implemented by 2014.

Specifically, these areas are:

• Achieving comprehensive nondiscrimination protections in health insurance exchanges

• Establishing LGBT-inclusive data collection policies

• Recognizing and including LGBT families in all health reform activities

• Supporting community-based health interventions that are LGBT-inclusive

Fundamentally, access to health care is social justice at its most basic. LGBT people need not only an end to legal discrimination but also access to the resources they need to lead healthy, happy lives. The Affordable Care Act offers a historic opportunity to prioritize prevention and wellness and make health care affordable and accessible for everyone, including LGBT people and their families.

To read the full report, click here. To learn more about National LGBT Health Awareness Week, please visit the National Coalition for LGBT Health.