TUSTIN, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--THREAD Research today announced a new iPhone app that gives the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) community a simple way to participate in the University of California, San Francisco’s (UCSF) PRIDE Study of the LGBTQ population. The PRIDE Study is the first population-level longitudinal study of LGBTQ health. With this landmark study, researchers aim to gain insight into priority health issues as well as unique health disparities in this diverse population.
The free app uses the ResearchKit framework developed by Apple and enables real-time consent, enrollment, and participation in the study from your iPhone. The UCSF PRIDE Study app will allow LGBTQ participants to voice their health concerns so researchers can crowdsource health topics that are important within the LGBTQ community in order to design the longitudinal questionnaires, which will begin appearing in the app in approximately six to nine months.
“LGBTQ people continue to face significant health issues stemming from discrimination, stigma, and a lack of information about how our identities affect our health. We hope this study, which will be designed with significant input from the LGBTQ community itself, will change all that,” said Dr. Mitchell R. Lunn, Co-Director of The PRIDE Study.
"Lesbian women are twice as likely to be obese than straight women, and we don’t know why,” said Dr. Juno Obedin-Maliver, Co-Director of The PRIDE Study. “That makes lesbian women susceptible to all kinds of health risks. It's the mission of The PRIDE Study to research and get to the bottom of these kinds of LGBTQ health issues, and The PRIDE Study iPhone app will give us access to a much wider population than previously possible.”
THREAD Research – a new division of the fast-growing digital healthcare ad agency THREAD – aims to help clinical researchers harness the power of mobile technology to allow for greater patient influence and participation in clinical health research.
“The really exciting aspect of The PRIDE Study app is that we’re using the ResearchKit framework to enable community-driven research in a large, but underserved community with unique health problems and concerns,” said Jeff Frazier, President/CEO of THREAD. “Mobile apps and related technologies enable patients to inform clinical trial endpoints and truly partner with healthcare providers on meaningful health studies, which has the potential to revolutionize the future of clinical research.”
ResearchKit is a software framework designed for medical and health research that helps doctors, scientists and other researchers gather data more frequently and more accurately from participants using mobile devices
UCSF researchers Mitchell R. Lunn, MD, and Juno Obedin-Maliver, MD, MPH, started planning The PRIDE Study in 2013. The PRIDE Study App can be downloaded beginning today from the App Store (pridestudy.me/app) and marks the official start of the study.
About THREAD and THREAD Research
THREAD Research is a new division of THREAD and is dedicated to exposing vital truths about human health through the digitization and democratization of research. THREAD Research seeks to elevate the role of the patient to drive medical advancements and innovations that are most applicable to the patient population being studied.
For more information about THREAD Research and The PRIDE Study, visit THREADResearch.com.