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These barriers make it more likely for ransgender people to avoid getting tested and less likely to remain in HIV-related medical care. Transgender people face additional barriers to healthcare that other HIV-affected people may not, specifically the very real fear of being discriminated against by health care professionals or being denied treatment because of their gender identity or expression. Transgender people need access to competent, affirming, sex-positive, safer-sex information that is specifically geared toward their bodies, relationships, and community concerns.
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These types of population-specific concerns are important to keep in mind when discussing biomedical interventions such as PrEP and underscore the need for research specifically designed to address the concerns of transgender people. For example, although there is some evidence to support PrEP’s efficacy among transgender women who have sex with men, more research should be done to determine what effect, if any, PrEP has on transgender men and women utilizing hormone replacement therapy. Transgender people need to be included in studies of HIV-affected communities, and HIV/AIDS advocates and the LGBTQ community need to acknowledge the ways in which transgender people may be uniquely affected by HIV. These risk factors include “higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse, sex work, incarceration, homelessness, attempted suicide, unemployment, lack of familial support, violence, stigma and discrimination, limited health care access, and negative health care encounters.” Essentially, because they are living in a society where significant stigma and discrimination against transgender people exists, they’re pushed into situations that greatly increase their HIV risk and severely limit their ability to obtain adequate care once infected. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC) suggests certain risk factors directly tied to transphobia and the marginalization that transgender people face that may contribute to such high infection rates. According to one recent international analysis, transgender women have 49 times the odds of having HIV compared to the general population. While transgender men are less likely to be HIV positive than transgender women, their rates of infection are still higher than that of the general population. The few recent studies that consider transgender women (and even fewer that consider transgender men) as a specific group reveal alarmingly high HIV infection rates. In the vast majority of studies, transgender people have only been counted as their sex assigned at birth, which not only discounts their identities, but leaves them relatively invisible to public health officials and advocacy organizations working toward prevention, treatment, and HIV-related health care. Recent HIV/AIDS-related blog posts can be read here.ĭespite several years of research on HIV/AIDS and the populations it affects, we know very little about transgender people and HIV. Visita aqui para ver este artículo en Español: Las personas transgénero y el VIH: Lo que sabemos