Jump to full article: Community Newspaper Group (au), 2009-04-07
Intro: THE high incidence of smoking among lesbians is the key issue being tackled by Curtin University’s Jude Comfort in her PhD study, which she hopes will extend the focus on gay health in general.
Ms Comfort is looking for women to take part in interviews for the study to uncover why smoking rates are much higher among lesbians, at a rate of 28 per cent compared to 15 per cent across the whole female population.
“It’s a rather large project – I’m interviewing for three months and I don’t expect the study to be done for 18 months,” she said.
“Ideally, I want to interview about 40 women and I’m half way through at the moment.”
Ms Comfort said that so far stress was emerging as a cause of the trend.
“I think there’s a lot of homophobia out there and it still causes stress on lesbian women when they have to come out to family and friends,” she said.
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