Dennis Mitchell/NLGJA Reporter

The Corkery Group’s Robert Caruano, representing Gilead Sciences, introduces yesterday’s back-to-back panel discussions “Mentioning the Unmentionable: Effective Reporting on LGBT Sexual Health.”

Panel: LGBT health reporting can be tricky

By Dennis Mitchell
NLGJA Reporter Staff Writer

A health writer used his hands to draw the lower digestive system in the air to show just how complicated health reporting can be.
           
Freelance journalist Bob Roehr explained the difference between anal cancer and colon cancer, as he explained simple human anatomy for a chuckling audience.

Friday’s back-to-back panels on “Mentioning the Unmentionable: Effective Reporting on LGBT Sexual Health” discussed major LGBT sexual health issues and potential ways to cover them for a mainstream audience. 

“There is no difference reporting sexual health for any group than it is for health issues in general because I use the same standard,” said Linda Villarosa, freelance writer and editor and former editor of the health pages at the New York Times.

Villarosa has seen a decline of reporting about HIV and AIDS.

A 2006 Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 61 percent of Americans look to the media for their main source of information HIV and AIDS, yet the total number of stories reported about HIV and AIDS in the United State has decreased from 5,000 in 1987 to less than 1,000 in 2002.

“We need to keep finding ways to freshen up stories,” Villarosa said. 
 There are still many stories to be told about HIV and AIDS, Washington, D.C. author and journalist John-Manuel Andriote said.

“Putting a human face on scientific studies makes stories sellable,” he said.
Two topics that receive little or no media coverage are STDs among lesbians and HPV, or human papillomavirus, a disease that can cause anal cancer among gay males, Roehr said. 

HPV “is a huge, huge problem which is not being reported,” he said.  “The growth of anal cancer is phenomenal.” 

While many media stories have been written discussing HPV and young women, few tie the issue to gay males.

The way STDs affect the lesbian community is hard to report, Roehr said, because so little research exists on the subject. 

“Things simply aren’t happening,” he said. He blamed the conservative right for an agenda that prevents the study of these issues. 

Villarosa says that the mainstream media fails to cover transgender sexual health.
“It’s not covered at all,” she said.

Covering these issues isn’t always easy.

“You have to dig a little deeper and go a little further,” she said.