Caleb Curry, a student in the College of Arts and Sciences, led a study about how asthma prevalence relates to race, ethnicity and sexual identity. Curry received support and mentorship from his colleagues at the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
The study uses a sample of 307,073 youths. Curry and his colleagues’ intersectional framework allowed key disparities to be examined that are otherwise missed—for example, asthma prevalence among Black bisexual males and Black gay/lesbian females. The researchers found that minority youths by sexual identity, race/ethnicity, and their intersections have a greater prevalence of clinician-diagnosed asthma compared to white heterosexual peers.