The following is research from The Pride Study published at the end of May 2023:

What Did We Do?

We surveyed people who are transgender, nonbinary, or gender-expansive (TGE) and assigned female at birth to learn about their experiences with healthcare providers (such as doctors, nurses, and other people who work in healthcare settings).

Participants reported on interactions they had with a healthcare provider in the last year from a list of 16 different types of experiences (such as negative effects from a provider’s opinions about their gender identity or sexuality and a provider asking inappropriate questions about their gender identity). We looked at how different characteristics (such as age, race, or education level) might relate to reporting negative experiences. We also looked at whether receiving gender-affirming care (such as hormones or gender-affirming surgery) and being out as TGE to healthcare providers might relate to having negative experiences.

What Was New, Innovative, or Notable?

This is one of the first studies with a large number of participants to look at the relationship between receiving gender-affirming care and negative interactions with healthcare providers.

What Did We Learn?

Most of the participants (70%) reported at least one negative experience with a healthcare provider in the past year. The most common experiences were being negatively affected by a provider’s opinions about LGBTQIA+ identities and having to educate a healthcare provider about TGE identities to receive proper medical care.

We compared the experiences of TGE people who received gender-affirming care with TGE people who had not received gender-affirming care. The people who received gender-affirming care were more likely to report negative experiences with healthcare providers. They also reported a higher number of negative experiences for 15 out of the 16 experiences included on the survey. Among people who did not receive gender-affirming care, those who were out about their TGE identity to their healthcare provider were more likely to report negative experiences.

What Does This Mean for Our Communities?

Our findings support increasing and improving training about TGE identities among healthcare providers to help reduce bias. Experiences with healthcare providers may be improved by changes to the medical system, such as more inclusive data collection options in medical records and better insurance coverage for gender-affirming care.

Our findings do not mean that coming out as TGE to your healthcare provider or receiving gender-affirming care means you are in any way responsible for any negative experiences you may have.

What’s Next?

We hope to use these findings to raise awareness about the quality of healthcare for TGE people. We also want to use this research to encourage healthcare providers to improve their understanding of TGE identities and gender-affirming care. Future research can explore how these findings might change over time. Additional research can focus on participants with a diverse range of racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, as the majority of the people in this study had health insurance and high levels of education and identified as white.

Action Steps

See http://www.pridestudy.org/study for more information and to share this study with your friends and family.

If you are interested in conducting research related to LGBTQIA+ health, please learn more about collaborating with The PRIDE Study at http://pridestudy.org/collaborate.

Citation

Inman EM, Obedin-Maliver J, Ragosta S, Hastings J, Berry J, Lunn MR, Flentje A, Capriotti MR, Lubensky ME, Stoeffler A, Dastur Z, Moseson H. Reports of negative interactions with healthcare providers among transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people assigned female at birth in the United States: results from an online, cross-sectional survey. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 May, 31; 20 6007. doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20116007

 

PS: Want to contribute to research specifically for the disability community around sex? I’m collecting data! This survey is open through the end of July 2023.

Photo used courtesy of Gender Spectrum