The Fenway Institute at Fenway Community Health has become the first community-based organization to be awarded a Population Research Development Grant by the federal government and the first federally-funded research center to focus specifically on sexual minority population research. The grant will support the creation of technical resources and compiling of data with the goals of producing cutting-edge research on LGBT communities and training the next generation of LGBT scholars. Priority areas are behavioral research on the transmission of HIV; characteristics and quality of life of LGBT families and households; and demographic aspects of LGBT health, morbidity, disability and mortality.

The Fenway Institute will provide leadership to develop a sustainable LGBT Health Population Research Center, coordinating and guiding all aspects of the program. ICPSR will work with Fenway to develop a special topic archive, collecting available data related to LGBT population groups and demographic research from a broad variety of sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, state and local governments, and research programs at universities and medical institutions.