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About The Long Island Lesbian Cancer Initiative (LILCI)

LILCI was founded by women who could not find services sensitive to them as lesbians and that struggle for sensitive services continues today. It's a big job and we've only just begun.

Our communities face barriers to care that include discrimination, misinformation and exclusion. Thus, the ability to manage one’s health, and to access timely screening, diagnosis, and treatment, are impacted.

Services targeting heterosexuals often have limited impact on our communities. For example, heterosexual women commonly seek womens health services for their reproductive and birth control concerns. Since these are not issues for most lesbians, routine breast and cervical exams are often missed.

These barriers to health and wellness come at a price. Lesbian women are more likely to discover cancer at a later, more dangerous stage of the disease than heterosexual women. In 1994, the CDC identified lesbians as an underserved population and recommended targeted cancer interventions.

Health Disparities and Culture:

Health Disparities are determined and measured by three health statistics – incidence (the number of new diagnoses), mortality (the number of deaths), and survival rates (length of survival). Health disparities occur when one group of people has a higher incidence or mortality rate than another, or when survival rates are less for one group than another. 1

Culture can be thought of as an integrated pattern of learned beliefs and behaviors that are shared among a group of people. Beliefs and behaviors include styles of communication, ways of interacting, views on roles and relationships, values, practices, and customs. 18,19 Culture shapes how we explain and value our world; it is the lens through which we give our world meaning.20

Many people may think of culture primarily in terms of their culture of origin\the environment and belief systems within which they were raised. Beyond cultures of origin, people are influenced by the many group cultures to which they belong. These can include kinship networks; ethnic, gender, or sexual orientation identity groups; religious affiliations; social classes; geographic regions; occupation; and disability.21 These variables influence us in many ways and are reflected in what we think about health care and the people who provide it. 2

Because we understand that individual health and community wellness are dynamically intertwined, LILCI's purpose is to eliminate health disparities through education, advocacy, research and services.

Programs range from immediate support needs, such as peer support services, to eliminating heterosexism and homophobia from health care through cultural competency training and supporting our communities inclusion in health research. LILCI is proud to be a grassroots, social justice, nonprofit organization dedicated to health and wellness with emphasis on cancer.

18. Donini-Lenhoff FG, Hedrick HL. Increasing awareness and implementation of cultural competence principles in health professions education. J Allied Health.2000;29:241-245.

19. Robins LS, Fantone JC, Hermann J et al. Improving cultural awareness and sensitivity training in medical school. Academic Med. 1998;73 (10 Suppl): S31-S34.

20. Nunez AE. Transforming cultural competence into cross-cultural efficacy in women’s health education. Academic Med.2000;75:107-80.

21. O’Connor, BB. Promoting cultural competence in HIV/AIDS care. JANAC.1996; 7(Suppl.1):41-53.

"LILCI has worked to positively impact issues surrounding health and wellness in our communities since 2000."