There are many reasons to make sure that cancer treatment is focused on cancer, not political ideology. The NCQA is one of several important healthcare and insurance agencies around the nation that gives voice to those who prefer funding political voices over having it all go to spending the money on actual research. The person to whom these groups have given voice is one Dr. Scout, a trans man who says there is a disparity for those who are sexual and gender minorities (in various quotes here, this will be SGM).
Author Note
Before we start this, I couldn't care less that this Dr. Scout is trans. People can be what they want, but forcing others to believe a false world is not something that is done. Cancer is a serious issue and every single person I have ever met who is involved with oncology (medical cancer specialty) worries about the person, not their gender, sexual persuasion, or mental delusions. I wrote this article because I do not believe that there should be a waste of funding on a political ideology or mental delusion.
So, this Dr. Scout (their only name is Scout, actually has their name on government identification as that) trying to help people with cancer is a good thing to me. That he is using his money to focus on a minority community that is oversaturated with funding is wasteful to me. The amount of people who identify as the minority he specializes in and the amount of money spent by the government alone is idiotic, in my eyes. Focusing on it at all makes me wonder. I have never met a medical professional who would not treat someone because of their sexual preference (unless it is a pedophile) or mental delusion, even if people are looking for it.
Scout Biography
Via an NIH interview, here is some details about Dr. Scout:
“Scout is the Executive Director of the National LGBT Cancer Network and the principal investigator of both the CDC-funded LGBTQ tobacco-related cancer disparity network and Out: The National Cancer Survey. He spends much of his time providing technical assistance for tobacco and cancer focusing agencies expanding their reach and engagement with LGBTQ+ populations. Scout has a long history in health policy analysis and a particular interest in expanding LGBTQ+ surveillance and research. He has faculty appointments at both Brown University and Boston Universities’ Schools of Public Health. He is a member of the NIH Council of Councils, the Co-Chair of the NIH Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office Work Group, on the Advisory Panel for NIH’s All of Us initiative, and a U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention delegate. His work has won him recognition from the U.S. House of Representatives, two state governments, and many city governments. Scout is an openly transgender father of three, a vegetarian, an avid hiker, and runner.”
NCQA and Other Groups Involvement
The NCQA has used Dr. Scout as a conference speaker, with the easiest to locate called In Pursuit of Equity: See It at the Summit. This was a conference saying that minority groups were suffering from inequity in their treatment. Yes, there are times this has happened, but most medical professionals do their best to never do this. He also is part of the FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, which has a page all about how tobacco focuses on minorities. Basically, he and his group go around saying that the LGBT community is being made victims by big tobacco.
How He Sees The World
Here, via the NIH interview, is how he describes his work experience, which should tell people how he sees the world in a manner that takes away from people just working to make cancer go away.
“When I graduated I was one of two openly trans PhD level health researchers I knew, which is a lonely place to be. But Judy continued helping me land well, pulling me into one of the biggest SGM health centers in the country to be the head of trans research. But to be honest, while she was a staunch ally, the rest of the environment was at times quite chilly. Nonetheless, I continued stepping ahead, doing a large national tobacco study and building my connections as Judy pulled me into more and more national queer health planning efforts. Soon I was the Science Director for the National LGBT Health Coalition and meeting with heads of different HHS OpDivs to get community health priorities moving. A key thing this work taught me was how policy shapes the ability of researchers to be able to conduct good SGM science. For many years, the researchers around me had to use coded words to get NIH studies about queers funded. They endured a brisk change of political winds everytime the President changed. They had to deal with their lives and or research being mocked by right wing trolls, including one time when there was a full scale witchhunt of queer researchers that to be honest, drove many away from the field. Because of this persistent headwind, I leaned into policy more and more, including pushing HHS’s Office of Minority Health to include SGM issues in cultural competency standards, a multi-year push to get SGM acknowledged as a health disparity population by NIH, then another to get an office of SGM health opened at NIH.”
Now, I want cancer to be cured, but I think it has become big money for many groups, which means the cure is not as important as funding their pet projects. This is how social justice issues actually work, come up with a problem and beg for money to fund research. On top of that, Dr. Scout is being allowed to give voice to those who run the insurance and healthcare industries, which raises prices for patients to fund his dreams. People wonder why healthcare is so expensive, well here is one of the reasons.
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