Understanding Society Scientific Conference 2025
Session: Sexual Minorities & Wellbeing
Location: EBS 2.1
Start Time: 15:15
End Time: 15:35
Title: PARALLEL SESSION E
Day: Wednesday, July 2, 2025
Professor Laia Becares
LGBQ+ people are more likely than heterosexual people to experience increased stress, and higher rates of common mental disorders, smoking, and harmful drinking behaviour. Lesbian and bisexual women are also more likely to be overweight than heterosexual women. Given underlying risk factors (e.g., tobacco and alcohol consumption, stress, poor mental health, and obesity), scholars have warned about a possible greater risk of cardiovascular disease for LGBQ+ populations, but this evidence is limited globally, and does not exist in the UK. This talk presents early findings from analyses of social and biomarker data from Understanding Society to examine the existence of LGBQ+ inequalities across different biomarkers of cardiovascular health, exploring interactions with age and gender.