When Kelly Watson’s wife of 23 years was on her deathbed with ALS (commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), she asked her hospice nurse if there was any hope of improvement. Watson recalls the nurse saying: “Perhaps the disease was punishment for being a lesbian, and if you renounce your relationship, perhaps she could heal.”
Watson’s wife passed away a few weeks later.
“It was probably one of the most extreme examples of a homophobic response from a care provider, but not uncommon,” said Watson, president and co-founder of Triangle Care Management, a local nonprofit that supports LGBTQ+ seniors and people with disabilities.
Watson helped create Triangle Care Management because of the discrimination and judgment she experienced with her wife. She said she’s also seen friends suffer, because they’re afraid to seek medical care.
According to a survey this spring by the LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert, local lesbians and queer women often said there is a need for better reproductive health services, doctors who respect their identity, and health programs designed with women in mind.
The center is presenting results to the community in a series of rolling town halls. The next event is scheduled for 5:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 19, at the Jerry Rummonds’ Community and Senior Center, at 87229 Church St., in Thermal.
When asked what mattered most regarding LGBTQ+ residents’ quality of life, 61% responded health and wellness. Lesbians also described gaps in programming, representation and women-centered spaces, according to the survey results.
“People assume because we have such a large LGBTQ population that (LGBTQ care) is good, but it’s not necessarily,” Watson said. “There are providers who have no ‘cultural competence,’ meaning a lot of people are ignorantly homophobic, because they have no knowledge of the LGBTQ culture. But the patient should not have to educate the provider.”
Karyl Ketchum is the director of The L-Fund at the Center, a support organization for local lesbians. Ketchum said a lack of research on the LGBTQ community trickles down to a lack of education in medical school—which leads to gaps in care.
“In medical school and in continuing medical education, there is no information about lesbian and queer women’s health,” Ketchum said. “That’s not an intentional omission, but because there wasn’t really any data about women’s health until five years ago.”
In 2021, a Columbia University study found that lesbian and queer-identified women have “significantly elevated mortality risk” compared to heterosexual women.
“Lesbians and queer women are a distinct and often overlooked population,” Ketchum said, adding that research often treats male biology as the universal default in studies, treating women as “shrunken men” and not considering genetic differences.
“Then, of course, lesbians and queer women are really left out (in studies), because they are a minority population of what is already considered a minority population,” Ketchum said.
Lesbian women live 20% shorter lives, and bisexual women live 37% shorter lives, compared to heterosexual women, according to a 2024 Harvard study.
“If it was any other demographic—for example, if it was white men—it would be a national emergency,” Ketchum said. “But it’s gone almost unrecognized because it’s a minority of women, and women’s health is already ignored.”
In the LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert survey, lesbians often said health-care providers and organizations fail to deliver services that meet their social and cultural needs.
“If the doctor’s going to be judgmental or not understand my lifestyle, then you aren’t going to want to come back, or you aren’t going to want to be totally honest,” said Steven Drew Auerbach, the founding executive director of Triangle Care Management. “And you may end up just trying to say what the doctor wants to hear, because you want to get out.”
The KFF Survey of Health Access and Care Giving, conducted earlier this year, found that LGBTQ+ adults are 20% more likely to postpone or skip necessary medical care than non-LGBTQ+ adults. Drew Auerbach said people are inherently nervous about going to the doctor, but a culturally incompetent doctor can be an extra deterrent for LGBTQ individuals.
Dr. Laura Rush worked for Kaiser Permanente for nearly 15 years as one of the few openly lesbian doctors in the Coachella Valley.
“I took that role seriously, because it’s important for me that lesbian, gay and queer-identifying women’s needs are met,” Rush said. “Lesbian women generally miss out on important screenings, such as breast cancer and Pap smears, because they aren’t comfortable … leading to many health problems being unidentified.”
Rush said patients from outside of the Coachella Valley would often travel to her in order to see a lesbian doctor. She said these patients tired of explaining their sexuality and justifying it to care providers, and just wanted a doctor who understood them.
“It was important to make sure these women felt that they were in a safe space, because it continues to be a challenge to get them to come in for their mammograms and their Pap smears,” Rush said. “There are a lot of misunderstandings that lesbian women don’t need those check-ups—and that’s absolutely not true. Things like HPV can be transmitted from woman to woman, and breast cancer is a huge risk.”
After retiring from Kaiser in June, Rush recently returned to the medical field, working at DAP Health. Rush will be working closely with the women’s health clinic slated to open at DAP’s Sunrise Campus in Palm Springs in early 2027.
“I think we save a lot of lives by just being there,” Rush said. “I think (the clinic) is going to be hugely important in this community, and it’s going to be life-changing for a lot of lesbian women, and women in general.”
