Lesbian researchers examine their group's ignored health issues

Complicating all these factors, researchers say, is a shortage of comprehensive data, resulting from the fact that most health surveys, as well as death certificates, don't account for sexual orientation.

''We don't know the mortality rates; we don't know the suicide rates," said Dr. Patricia Robertson of the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. ''Lesbians are invisible."

Robertson is codirector of UCSF's Lesbian Health Research Center, founded in 1999 to fill the perceived void in the study of lesbians' medical problems.

Other relatively new organizations have undertaken similar efforts, including the San Francisco-based Lesbian Health Fund and the Washington-based Mautner Project, which focuses on lesbians with cancer. A national conference on lesbian health was held in Chicago last month.

Several researchers said in interviews that they were derided by some colleagues for entering the field and still encounter skepticism, both within the medical profession and among Bush administration officials who influence priorities for federal health grants.

Robertson, in a pattern she says is common among lesbian researchers, performs most of her research and advocacy work on a volunteer basis while earning a living as an obstetrician. The general attitude -- at the research center and among its allies -- is that important research might not get done unless lesbians do it themselves.

One challenge, for all those concerned with lesbian health, is that the problems they confront are more subtle than those facing gay men.

''In the gay men's community, most of the issues relate to sexually transmitted disease -- it's absolutely clear what kind of health risk it poses," said Susan Cochran, an epidemiologist at UCLA.

For the activist researchers, and groups like the Mautner Project, their work involves a balancing act -- conveying concern without fueling negative stereotypes. Many lesbians are in excellent health and, particularly if affluent or well insured, readily find doctors they like.