Black Bisexual Women’s Health in the United States: A Systematic Literature Review

In the United States, Black bisexual women’s experiences are mostly invisible in the mainstream heterosexual and same-gender-loving health research. These women’s voices are often excluded from study findings or subsumed under the umbrella of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) identities. Thus, there is very little scholarly information about who these women are and how they manage their health. A systematic review was conducted to assess and summarize the US public health and social science literature about Black bisexual women’s health. This chapter provides a brief overview of the US literature about Black sexual minority women’s health (i.e., lesbian and bisexual women) as these two populations are often studied together in research, and then moves into a detailed account of the systematic review specifically related to Black bisexual women’s health in the United States. The chapter concludes with a discussion of knowledge gaps related to Black bisexual women’s health, the implications of those knowledge gaps, and suggestions about how to further the literature.