Canadian Health Research Funding Patterns for Sexual and Gender Minority Populations Reflect Exclusion of Women.

We explored the funding areas of Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (trans), queer or questioning, and intersex individuals (2S/LGBTQI)-specific health research funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) mentioned in the grant abstracts. We analyzed the publicly available database of grant abstracts funded by CIHR from 2009-2020 to examine what types of 2S/LGBTQI-specific health outcomes would be studied and in what populations. We found that 58% of awarded grant abstracts mentioned studying sexually transmitted diseases, the majority of which was on human immunodeficiency virus. Of the funded 2S/LGBTQI grant abstracts that specified the gender of the population to be studied (n=23), less then 9% mentioned studying cisgender women. Almost 40% mentioned including trans women/girls, and 30% mentioned including trans men/boys. None of the studies examined mentioned work with the Two-Spirit community. These results reflect larger social and health inequities that require structural level changes in research to support the 2S/LGBTQI community.