Interdisciplinary Research Seminar - Gender, Sexuality, Health and the Body

“Uncovering Intersectional Health Disparities among Sexual and Gender Minority Youth Using Innovative Methods”

Presented by Dr Ryan Watson, University of Connecticut, USA

In this talk, Dr. Watson will share his ongoing research by reviewing recent findings from contemporary data using his large national sample (N=17,620) of sexual and gender diverse (SGD) youth (13-18 years of age) and longitudinal national sample of 300 Black and Latino/e/x SGD individuals. In particular, he will highlight the role of stigma and stress that are implicated in the consistent body of research that documents health disparities among SGD youth and young adults, which extend to school and family experiences. Dr. Watson will discuss using novel methodologies (i.e., Exhaustive Chi Squared Automatic Interaction Detection) newly applied to explore intersectionality with quantitative data. Through explaining the use of novel methodologies to promote health and wellness among SGD youth and young adults, Dr. Watson will discuss which groups of SGD youth share disproportionate burdens of health problems. In addition to novel methodologies applied to studying health promotion, Dr. Watson will discuss emerging issues of mischievous and fraudulent responses now ubiquitous in online data collection, including the identification of the problem and techniques he has successfully implemented to ensure data collection rigor.

Ryan Watson, PhD is an Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut, USA. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles focused on reducing health disparities among SGD youth and young adults. Motivated by the urgent need to reduce the inequities in health for vulnerable populations, he has focused his scholarship on SGD youth and young adults, their relationships within family and school contexts, and their health experiences. He works with a team of researchers to elucidate the mechanisms that drive well-documented injustices in health, school, and community experiences for SGD individuals. His most recent work focuses on health experiences (e.g., substance use and disordered eating) among SGD adolescents and emerging adults, using his national U.S. data collected with over 35,000 SGD youth. A complimentary body of Dr. Watson’s research focuses on preventing health disparities (e.g., HIV) through prevention and intervention strategies attuned to intersecting social positions.