"The outdated lesbian and bisexual health pages were removed and the health content was integrated into the relevant health topics pages across the website,” an HHS spokesperson said. | HHS HHS strips lesbian, bisexual health content from women’s health website

Multiple LGBT health resources were removed from a popular HHS website last fall, a new report finds.

A webpage devoted to lesbian and bisexual health, links to LGBT topics and other references were removed between September and October 2017 from WomensHealth.gov, a website maintained by HHS’ Office on Women’s Health. The removals were tracked in a pair of reports by the Sunlight Foundation's Web Integrity Project and shared with POLITICO.


HHS said the pages and links, some of which were first posted in 2012, were taken down as part of a routine update. "The outdated lesbian and bisexual health pages were removed and the health content was integrated into the relevant health topics pages across the website,” an HHS spokesperson said.

However, the Sunlight Foundation determined that existing health topic pages do not appear to have been updated with new material and the now-missing lesbian and bisexual health content was not integrated elsewhere. For instance, HHS removed a page that raises multiple LGBT-specific questions — such as “What are important health issues that lesbians and bisexual women should discuss with their health care professionals?” — that are not explicitly addressed elsewhere across the website. “Bisexual and lesbian health” was also removed from the website’s listing of more than 100 different health care topics, which still includes other population-specific topics like “breastfeeding information for African-American communities.”

A lesbian and bisexual health fact sheet also was removed from its web address. Sunlight Foundation researchers say the fact sheet was quietly moved to a different location in the website's archives and "placed on an island.” No links currently direct to it.

The office’s Twitter account, @womenshealth, which has nearly 1 million followers, also has not mentioned LGBT health issues since a post on Nov. 11, 2016.

The Sunlight Foundation’s Andrew Bergman, who helped lead the study, said that the group has identified similar removals on other HHS webpages, but the changes at the women’s health website stand out. “We’ve seen nothing this targeted at one HHS site,” Bergman said. “The removal of lesbian and bisexual health materials in particular, without advance notice and in a targeted way, raise concerns that they’ve targeted information for vulnerable populations.”

HHS has faced questions about its broader approach to LGBT health. POLITICO in February detailed how the agency has taken steps to dismantle LGBT health initiatives, stripped LGBT-friendly language from documents and reassigned the senior adviser dedicated to LGBT health.

WomensHealth.gov is among the health department’s more-trafficked websites. The website received about 700,000 visits over the past month, ahead of sites like Medicaid.gov and FoodSafety.gov.

The website is managed by Hager Sharp, a communications firm, which has been under contract since 2012. But HHS, not the outside communications firm, determines the content. Hager Sharp referred questions to HHS.

The women’s health office also saw a personnel shake-up late last year. Suzanne Haynes, who had been a senior science adviser at HHS and the former president of the Lesbian Health Fund, oversaw the office’s LGBT health research. Haynes, who retired from HHS in December, declined comment.

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