Health Lifestyle Behaviors among Southern Lesbians: The Roles of Social
Support and Community Integration
INTRODUCTION
Since the mid-1980s there has been increased research and clinical interest in
the health disparities between lesbian and heterosexually-identified women (IOM 1999).
Beginning with Ryan and Bradford’s ground-breaking National Lesbian Health Care
Survey in 1984 (Bradford and Ryan 1988), researchers, health care providers, and
lesbian communities alike have sought to address the high prevalence of cardiovascular
disease and other obesity-related conditions in the lesbian population (Cochran et al.
2001; Roberts 2006). What has become clear over the past two decades of lesbian
health research is the fact that the observed health disparities between lesbian and
heterosexual women are attributable primarily to social differences in women’s lives,
rather than any biological or genetic predisposition. In this work we explore the role of
social support and community involvement in the health lifestyle behaviors of a sample
of lesbians living in the Southern United States. Moving beyond the primarily
descriptive and atheoretical work which constitutes the majority of the literature on
lesbian health disparities, we seek to locate lesbians’ individual-level health behaviors
within the larger structure of inequality (i.e., heterosexism) using an explicitly
sociological approach, health lifestyle theory.
Existing Research on Lesbian Health
Existing research on lesbian health disparities has focused primarily on the
negative physical and mental health consequences of lesbians’ sexual minority status.
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