“Despite decades of research and advocacy, sexual and gender minorities are still not equitably included in health research and surveillance in the United States. In 1990, as I was beginning graduate school, I wrote on a piece of paper “Data = Power.” This was my take on ACT UP’s (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) “Silence = Death.” I created this personal motto because I had been working in the late 1980s on evaluations of some of the earliest federally funded HIV/AIDS prevention programs while attending ACT UP’s first demonstration at the Food and Drug Administration in 1988 and attending its action to “Storm the NIH” (National Institutes of Health) in 1990. What struck me more than anything during this period was that nothing could be said with confidence about sexual and gender minorities. Fundamental and excruciatingly simple questions were unanswerable and factual statements elusive.”