Determinants of trust among ethnic minority community members towards community-based organisations and leaders during pandemics and other emergencies in Australia.

In 2023, the Human Rights Campaign declared a state of emergency for sexual and gender minority (SGM) persons in the US, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people, due to the increased passage of anti-SGM legislation. Over 80 anti-SGM bills became state law in 2023, including 27 restricting health care. These laws affect patients as well as physicians. As data suggest a more diverse and representative physician workforce is important for improving population health, it is necessary to understand the factors affecting the preferred practice setting for future physicians identifying as SGM. Current research has demonstrated that sexual minority medical school graduates have higher odds of intending to practice in the Northeast, West, or in urban areas than their heterosexual peers, likely resulting in lower SGM physician representation in Central, Southern, and more rural areas of the US. The reason SGM future physicians cluster geographically remains understudied. The primary objective of this study was to determine how overall state-level SGM policy environments affect where SGM matriculating medical students plan to work after graduating. We hypothesize that more favorable state-level policy environments specific to SGM people and health care will be positively associated with where SGM medical students intend to practice. This cross-sectional, secondary data analysis used the 2020-2024 Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Matriculating Student Questionnaire (MSQ), an annual voluntary survey for matriculating first-year medical students in the US. This study followed the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology () reporting guideline for cross-sectional studies. The Boston University Medical Center institutional review board deemed this study exempt from review because data were deidentified.