Members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community smoke more than their heterosexual counterparts.

Way more.

That's particularly true for women and for teens and young adults.

"I've seen some [national] studies that suggest that the youth and the young adult GLBT population smoke at a rate seven times the rate of their heterosexual counterparts," said Betty Hill, executive director of Persad Center, Inc., the Bloomfield-based counseling center for the gay and lesbian community.

Women in that community, other research shows, smoke nearly 200 percent more than their heterosexual counterparts, while men smoke 50 percent more than the general population.

Ms. Hill believes those statistics hold up pretty well in Pittsburgh's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender population.

But perhaps someday they won't.

Persad and Tobacco Free Allegheny, the state-funded, primary contractor for tobacco prevention and control in the county since 2002, have teamed up on a one-year, approximately $30,000 pilot program aimed at finding the best way to help Persad's clients quit.

"One of the things the state health department asks all of us to do is work with variously, disparately impacted populations," said Cindy Thomas, executive director of TFA. "For us in Pittsburgh, since we have an active, growing and sizable population of LGBT, it seemed like a logical place to put some effort."

They launched the initiative in January, starting group cessation programs with a standard American Lung Association curriculum. Some were geared to youth and young adults and the others to adults. The programs include access to smoking cessation patches and healthy lifestyle instruction, among other aspects, Ms. Thomas said.

"What we're trying to do is a couple of things: We're taking a curriculum that has not been specially designed for GLBT people, to use it with GLBT people and to come back with recommendations on how to make the curriculum more sensitive to their needs," Ms. Hill said.

They also are running focus groups in which participants of the smoking cessation classes are asked what would make the sessions better.

The cessation classes are run by Persad counselors trained by TBA, a tactic Tobacco Free Allegheny learned in earlier initiatives with other population groups.

"What we find effective when trying to reach any specific population disparately affected by tobacco, which is when they smoke at greater rates, [is] we find it's much better to go to them than to expect them to come to us," Ms. Thomas said. "We embedded, or nested, our cessation program at Persad. We trained their counselors so they know how to talk to their clients individually or in a group setting about tobacco use and to help them quit."

So far, so good.

"We're running groups with about six to 10 people, and we've done six groups, and I would say about a third are quitting," Ms. Hill said. "I think it is good. Most are reducing their smoking, and that's good. And there is a group of them who are continuing to be involved in support and support groups, and hopefully they'll get there."

Ms. Hill said she believes bringing the program to Persad and using its counselors have been pluses.

"Part of what I think is the success of the initiative is that people are comfortable being themselves. It's a group of sameness," she said. "It's easier for gay people to quit in a group of gay people. They don't have to monitor their behavior. ... They're not doing any hiding, so just the sameness of the group makes it successful."

Ironically, liking that ability to be themselves may have had a role in the gay and lesbian community becoming so heavily populated with smokers in the first place.

"Traditionally, we've thought the high rate of smoking was because the social center in the early days was the gay bar, and with gay bars went smoking," Ms. Hill said. "That's not so much the case today, but it's always been suspected as part of the smoking culture. There were so few places to go to be yourself, you went to a gay bar, which led to the vulnerability to both drinking and smoking.

"I don't know if that's a driving influence today, but when we started smoking work, some of our consumers said they started smoking and then never thought of doing anything to improve their health."

Gay bars may not be the place young GLBTs go to feel comfortable today, but young smokers at Persad still cite a desire for that same sort of feeling of belonging when they talk about their habit.

"When you talk to kids, they talk about one, the social aspect of smoking," Ms. Hill said. "There's a smokers' group's kind of gain you get when you're a smoker. You belong to a group of other people the same as you, so there's that belonging and social piece to it.

"And the other thing that gets talked about a lot that's counter-intuitive is anxiety. [They say] it's a response to anxiety ... It makes them feel calmer. ...

"I think most of all discriminated-against and oppressed populations are more challenged in areas of doing things for their own well-being," she added. "I think they have grown up in a message of not being valued and taught they're not very good. It's a collective negative sort of self-regard ... that comes from the social context of discrimination."

And therein lies a welcomed by-product of the smoking cessation program, Ms. Hill said. "Their involvement ... has them paying more attention to their health overall. They're starting to do broader thinking about their well-being, and that pleases me."

For information about the Persad programs call the agency at 412-441-9786.