Pride With Heart
In June, we uplift the LGBTQ+ community for Pride Month. For over 50 years, they have marched to commemorate their struggle and fight against discrimination in health care, employment, and housing across the country and around the globe.
As the crisis of health inequity takes a toll on underrepresented and under-resourced communities,
LGBTQ+ individuals also find they are heavily impacted because of their diversity of age, race, gender identity, ethnicity, location, and socio-economic level.
56%
of sexual minorities report some form of discrimination by clinicians. That number goes up to 70% when gender is an issue.
2.5x
LGBTQ+ adults smoke at a rate 2.5 times higher than heterosexual adults.
1 in 5
LGBTQ+ adults smokes regularly
Survivor Story: Lindsey Huie
Lindsey Huie is a collegiate and professional soccer star. She’s a former member of the Women’s National Team and is currently a member of the L.A. Galaxy. She’s also a heart survivor.
Shop With Heart
Raise awareness about LGBTQ diversity and inclusion when it comes to matters of the heart with the AHA Pride tee. Available in adult sizes XS through 4XL.
We are proud of the work we do to build lives free of cardiovascular diseases and stroke for ALL Americans.
Pride Month Ambassadors
Scroll to read about these influential members and allies of the LGBTQ+ community.
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Dr. Sara J. Baker was an American physician notable for her contributions to public health, especially in the immigrant communities of New York City. She fought against the damage that urban poverty caused children. Her work organizing the first child hygiene department under government control led to the lowest infant death rate in any American or European city during the 1910s. She also is known for (twice) tracking down Mary Mallon, the infamous index case known as Typhoid Mary. Baker was in a long-term relationship with screenwriter Ida Wylie.
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Dr. Rebecca Allison is an American cardiologist and transgender activist. She served as President of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association and as Chair of the American Medical Association's Advisory Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues.
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Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld is a researcher, physician, and president-elect of the American Medical Association. He is also a Navy veteran who was twice deployed to Afghanistan. For the past two decades, Dr. Ehrenfeld has advocated on behalf of LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2018, in recognition of his outstanding research contributions, he received the inaugural Sexual and Gender Minority Research Investigator Award from the director of the NIH.
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Dr. Uzodinma Iweala is a non-practicing physician and the author of Beast of No Nations, the New York Times bestseller about a child soldier in Africa. The book was made into a film in 2015. Dr. Iweala released his second novel, Speak No Evil, in 2018. He is a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and is the CEO of The Africa Center in New York.
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Dr. C. Dale Young is a practicing physician and writer. He is a graduate of the University of Florida with two degrees – MD and MFA. He is a radiation oncologist in California, and he was the poetry editor of the New England Review. His writings have appeared in The Atlantic, The Yale Review, the Paris Review, and The New Republic.
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Dr. Melvin Echols is the Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer at the American College of Cardiology. He is also a professor at the Morehouse School of Medicine and a member of the Association of Black Cardiologists. He has done extensive research into cardiovascular health in minority populations and Black maternal health.