The Experience of Bladder Health in Community-Dwelling Sexual and Gender Minority Individuals Within the RISE FOR HEALTH Study

Purpose: Research exists exploring prevalence of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) in cisgender heterosexual women yet validated instruments have not been used to survey sexual and gender minority (SGM) people. Alongside LUTS measures, recently validated bladder health instruments were used in the RISE FOR HEALTH Study that included expanded demographic information of sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex assigned at birth questions. Materials and Methods: The RISE FOR HEALTH study is a population-based prospective cohort survey study of adults born female, recruited from a commercial marketing database. Participants who responded to questions identifying them as SGM people were compared with age-matched non-SGM participants. Chi-square and t tests were used for comparison between groups in general, and in the age-matched sample paired t tests, McNemar, and McNemar-Bowker tests were used. Results: Among 98% of participants who answered sexual and gender identity questions (3364 of 3424), 260 (8%) met sexual and gender subset criteria with a selected group of 260 non-SGM people participants for the age-matched comparison. The SGM participants had significantly lower bladder health scores and bladder function indices yet there were no significant differences in lower urinary symptoms between the SGM participants and the age matched non-SGM participants. Conclusions: In this study, SGM populations had bladder health and bladder function outcomes suggesting poorer bladder health and higher risk for LUTS compared with cisgender populations.