Event

Measuring sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation

Findings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Register
seminar
  • Event time:
    21st March 2023 16:00 GMT Standard Time – 17:00 GMT Standard Time
  • Format:
    online

The growing visibility of sexual and gender diversity within the population has prompted a re-examination of the ways in which data on sex, gender, and sexual orientation are collected.

As part of these efforts, the Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office of the U.S. National Institutes of Health asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee of experts.

This committee was tasked with reviewing current data collection practices and developing recommendations for measures of sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex for use in survey research, administrative, and medical and clinical contexts.

Implementation of these measures would enhance the quality and comparability of data collection efforts and improve identification of a broad range of sexual and gender minorities within these contexts.

In this webinar, we will hear from three of the committee’s members, who will outline the committee’s findings and recommendations for measuring sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity (including intersex).

Speakers

  • Nancy Bates
    formerly US Census Bureau
    Nancy Bates spent her career as a survey statistician/methodologist at the U.S. Census Bureau. Before she retired in 2020, she served as the Census Bureau’s Senior Methodologist for Survey Research. During her tenure in that position, she conducted research to improve measurement of same-sex couples in the Decennial Census and American Community Survey, served as co-chair of the research group on sexual orientation and gender identity for the Office of Management and Budget and the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology, and co-edited a special issue on measuring LGBT populations for the Journal of Official Statistics. In retirement, she co-chaired the National Academy of Science and Medicine consensus panel report: Measuring Sex, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation. Nancy is an elected fellow of the American Statistical and obtained an M.A. in Applied Sociology from the University of Oklahoma.
  • Dr. Kellan Baker
    Executive Director Whitman-Walker Institute
    Dr. Kellan Baker is the Executive Director of Whitman-Walker Institute, the research, policy, and education arm of Whitman-Walker, a community health system in Washington, DC that also includes a Federally Qualified Health Center. Kellan is a health services researcher, educator, and health policy professional with particular expertise in health equity research and policy. Kellan served as an appointed member of the National Academy of Sciences consensus study committee that developed standards for the collection of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation data by the National Institutes of Health. He holds appointments as affiliate faculty in the Departments of Health Policy and Management at the George Washington University and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and he received his PhD in health policy and management from Johns Hopkins, where he was a Health Policy Research Scholar and Centennial Scholar; an MPH and MA from George Washington University; and a BA with high honours from Swarthmore College.
  • Katharine Dalke
    Assistant professor Penn State College of Medicine
    Katharine Dalke MD MBE (she/they) is assistant professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health and Humanities at the Penn State College of Medicine. Her clinical and academic work focuses on the mental health of patients who are LGBTQI or have differences of sex development. She also serves as the Vice Chair for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the department of Psychiatry and as Penn State College of Medicine’s director of the office for Culturally Responsive Health Care Education. Her clinical, scholarly, and advocacy work has been recognized with appointment to the Pennsylvania Governor’s Commission on LGBTQ Affairs, the Working Group to the National Institutes of Health Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office, and as consensus committee member on two recent LGBTQI+ health publications by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.