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      Knowledge, Indications and Willingness to Take Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis among Transwomen in San Francisco, 2013

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          Abstract

          Safe and effective HIV prevention strategies are needed for transwomen. Transwomen in the US have a 34 times greater odds of being infected with HIV than all adults age 15-49, and in San Francisco, California 42.4% of transwomen are estimated to be infected with HIV. Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is the first biomedical intervention with promise for reducing HIV acquisition in transwomen. However, little is known about whether transwomen know about PrEP, are taking PrEP and would be good candidates for PrEP based on their risk profile and behaviors. A population-based dataset was analyzed to determine how many transwomen in San Francisco knew about PrEP by the end of 2013 – more than a year after iPrex results demonstrated efficacy of PrEP in preventing HIV. We found that of 233 transwomen, only 13.7% had heard of PrEP. Transwomen who were living with HIV compared to those who were HIV-negative, and those who recently injected drugs compared to non-injection drug users were more likely to have heard of PrEP. Based on CDC guidelines for PrEP among MSM and IDU, 45 (30.2%) transwomen of the 149 HIV-negative transwomen in the sample were candidates for PrEP. This estimate based on CDC criteria is arguably low. Given that almost half of transwomen in San Francisco are living with HIV, this findings points to a need for further consideration of PrEP criteria that are specific and tailored to the risks for HIV faced by transwomen that are different from MSM and injection drug users. Research to scale up access and test the effectiveness of PrEP for transwomen is also urgently needed.

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          HIV prevalence, risk behaviors, health care use, and mental health status of transgender persons: implications for public health intervention.

          This study described HIV prevalence, risk behaviors, health care use, and mental health status of male-to-female and female-to-male transgender persons and determined factors associated with HIV. We recruited transgender persons through targeted sampling, respondent-driven sampling, and agency referrals; 392 male-to-female and 123 female-to-male transgender persons were interviewed and tested for HIV. HIV prevalence among male-to-female transgender persons was 35%. African American race (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 5.81; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.82, 11.96), a history of injection drug use (OR = 2.69; 95% CI = 1.56, 4.62), multiple sex partners (adjusted OR = 2.64; 95% CI = 1.50, 4.62), and low education (adjusted OR = 2.08; 95% CI = 1.17, 3.68) were independently associated with HIV. Among female-to-male transgender persons, HIV prevalence (2%) and risk behaviors were much lower. Most male-to-female (78%) and female-to-male (83%) transgender persons had seen a medical provider in the past 6 months. Sixty-two percent of the male-to-female and 55% of the female-to-male transgender persons were depressed; 32% of each population had attempted suicide. High HIV prevalence suggests an urgent need for risk reduction interventions for male-to-female transgender persons. Recent contact with medical providers was observed, suggesting that medical providers could provide an important link to needed prevention, health, and social services.
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            Experiences of transgender-related discrimination and implications for health: results from the Virginia Transgender Health Initiative Study.

            We examined relationships between social determinants of health and experiences of transgender-related discrimination reported by transgender people in Virginia. In 2005 through 2006, 387 self-identified transgender people completed a statewide health needs assessment; 350 who completed eligibility questions were included in this examination of factors associated with experiences of discrimination in health care, employment, or housing. We fit multivariate logistic regression models using generalized estimating equations to adjust for survey modality (online vs paper). Of participants, 41% (n = 143) reported experiences of transgender-related discrimination. Factors associated with transgender-related discrimination were geographic context, gender (female-to male spectrum vs male-to-female spectrum), low socioeconomic status, being a racial/ethnic minority, not having health insurance, gender transition indicators (younger age at first transgender awareness), health care needed but unable to be obtained (hormone therapy and mental health services), history of violence (sexual and physical), substance use health behaviors (tobacco and alcohol), and interpersonal factors (family support and community connectedness). Findings suggest that transgender Virginians experience widespread discrimination in health care, employment, and housing. Multilevel interventions are needed for transgender populations, including legal protections and training for health care providers.
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              Review of sampling hard-to-reach and hidden populations for HIV surveillance.

              Adequate surveillance of hard-to-reach and 'hidden' subpopulations is crucial to containing the HIV epidemic in low prevalence settings and in slowing the rate of transmission in high prevalence settings. For a variety of reasons, however, conventional facility and survey-based surveillance data collection strategies are ineffective for a number of key subpopulations, particularly those whose behaviors are illegal or illicit. This paper critically reviews alternative sampling strategies for undertaking behavioral or biological surveillance surveys of such groups. Non-probability sampling approaches such as facility-based sentinel surveillance and snowball sampling are the simplest to carry out, but are subject to a high risk of sampling/selection bias. Most of the probability sampling methods considered are limited in that they are adequate only under certain circumstances and for some groups. One relatively new method, respondent-driven sampling, an adaptation of chain-referral sampling, appears to be the most promising for general applications. However, as its applicability to HIV surveillance in resource-poor settings has yet to be established, further field trials are needed before a firm conclusion can be reached.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Academic Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                3 June 2015
                2015
                : 10
                : 6
                : e0128971
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Center for Public Health Research, San Francisco Department of Public Health, San Francisco, California, United States of America
                [2 ]Bridge HIV, San Francisco Department of Public Health, San Francisco, California, United States of America
                David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, UNITED STATES
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: ECW HJ HFR. Performed the experiments: HJ HFR. Analyzed the data: ECW AL HJ HFR. Wrote the paper: ECW AL HJ HFR.

                Article
                PONE-D-15-02882
                10.1371/journal.pone.0128971
                4454556
                26039511
                682ab55e-4772-40ca-b7cc-ee2073caee42
                Copyright @ 2015

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

                History
                : 22 January 2015
                : 4 May 2015
                Page count
                Figures: 0, Tables: 2, Pages: 11
                Funding
                The authors received no specific funding for this work.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Custom metadata
                All relevant data are within the paper.

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

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