Provider quality and barriers to care for transgender people: An analysis of data from the Wisconsin transgender community health assessment

ABSTRACT

Background: Transgender people in the United States often lack access to high-quality health care.

Methods: A group of researchers and transgender people came together in a community-based participatory research process to survey transgender Wisconsinites about their health care experiences. A multiple regression analysis of survey data was used to evaluate the association between barriers to health care, gender identity, and quality of medical and mental health care provider.

Results: Seventy-seven respondents were included in this analysis. Transmasculine respondents were more likely than transfeminine respondents to report barriers to high-quality health care, but having a high-quality medical or mental health care provider was associated with reporting fewer barriers to care across the entire sample.

Discussion: This community-based study suggests that health care providers play a key role in facilitating access to care for transgender Wisconsinites in the USA.

KEYWORDS:

• Barriers to care
• community-based participatory research
• provider quality
• survey
• transgender

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Wisconsin Transgender Health Coalition, and, in particular, their Data Team for their assistance in preparing this manuscript.

Declaration of conflict of interest/ethical approval

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Funding

Dr. Conniff's work was funded in part by HRSA Ruth T. Kirschstein Training Grant T32 HP10010-23-00.