Study Asks Trans Women About Experiences Surrounding HIV Infection
A recent study completed by researchers from the San Francisco Department of Public Health seeks to understand why trans women face such big obstacles to physical and mental health well-being, and the experiences surrounding HIV infection.
Prior research has shown that trans women are disproportionately affected by HIV compared to cisgender women and men who have sex with men but the reasons are not well understood.
To conduct the study, researchers used National HIV Behavioral Surveillance data collected from July 2019 to February 2020 to recruit 201 trans women, half of whom were 50 years or older and lived below the federal poverty line.
Researchers developed questions for participants to answer, such as, “Could you tell me in a couple of sentences how you believe you contracted HIV?”
About 82% of the responses were write-in responses and the research team reviewed and coded them based on themes.
During the final review, researchers arrived at seven themes: sex with a straight cisgender man partner while the participant identified as a trans woman; sexual assault; sex with a partner who was gay or a man who had sex with men; injection drug use; injection drug use and sexual contact (unknown which category); sex with a partner who injected drugs; and sex work.
The study shows that HIV transmission possibilities cannot be reduced to the traditional transmission categories. It also shows that all the situations and experiences of this study population should be documented and understood to ensure HIV prevention strategies for trans women and their sexual partners.
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