LGBTQI Health Research & Practice

Social and cultural norms and discussion surround LGBT people has been changing rapidly in the United States and around the world, leading to rapid changes in acceptable and/or widely used vocabulary. Library and research terminology changes more slowly, and older research articles often uses verbiage now considered outdated or unacceptable or overly clinical for use in conversation or writing. This brief guide hopes to help searchers take this fact into account and find all useful terms to use in searches.

These sources list current social vocabulary relating to LGBTI issues. Keyword and natural language searching will find many of these terms in relevant articles and news stories, both in PubMed and in other databases.

PubMed and other medical research databases index their articles using the National Library of Medicine's MeSH subject headings. Many older or even some current MeSH terms for LGBT concepts are no longer acceptable socially or are rarely used. Many commonly used terms are not reflected in MeSH at all.

Due to this issue, it is critical that you consult the MeSH database to find all terms to search PubMed effectively. You may also search for common terms using a keyword search, but many useful articles will not include them. To be most effective, you will need to search using both MeSH and common terminology.