Social accountability and improving care for sexual and gender diverse patients

Abstract

Social Accountability (SA) in healthcare includes understanding and responding to how social determinants affect patient health. Altruistic healthcare professionals can improve socially accountable patient care at the individual patient or family level (micro), the population or community level (meso), and/or provincial, federal, or international levels (macro). There is a well-established healthcare equity gap for Sexual and Gender Diverse (SGD) people affected by cancer. In this article, I discuss how SA has played a role in my career. As a SGD healthcare professional, I offer some personal examples of SA in action that have made a difference. For socially accountable healthcare professionals, there is almost always something to contribute to improve care, from the patient to the policy level.