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by Madeleine Roberts •
CDC Releases National Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Results
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the national Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance results for 2019. It’s clear from the national data that many LGBTQ young people continue to suffer higher health and suicide risks than their peers. This follows the same trends present in an HRC analysis of the 2015 and 2017 data -- LGBTQ students are more likely to experience victimization, violence and suicidality. In many areas of the data, transgender students are facing more disparities in 2019 than they were in 2017.
The data show that 43% of transgender youth have been bullied on school property. 29% of transgender youth, 21% of gay and lesbian youth and 22% of bisexual youth have attempted suicide.
In 2019, many states collected gender identity data. Data for 14 of these states across more than 107,000 youth are included in publicly available files on the CDC’s website. Below are initial key findings from HRC’s original analysis of these 2019 data:
The full YRBS results can be found here.
These data underscore the need and urgency for youth-serving professionals to be well equipped to meet the needs of LGBTQ youth. The HRC Foundation has many resources for LGBTQ students and educators, including our Welcoming Schools program, resources for LGBTQ youth and resources specific to COVID-19. If you’d be interested in speaking with an HRC expert about this data, I’d be happy to help connect you. After all, youth-serving professionals who have attended the annual HRC Foundation’s Time to THRIVE conference are 64% more likely to say they are prepared to promote physical safety of LGBTQ youth than youth-serving professionals who haven’t attended Time to THRIVE.
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