“They already hate us for being immigrants and now for being trans—we have double the fight”: A qualitative study of barriers to health access among transgender Latinx immigrants in the United States

Abstract

Introduction

Latinx transgender people who are also immigrants experience barriers to health services and comprise a marginalized group at risk for poor mental health. Greater understanding of transgender Latinx immigrants’ health needs and experiences with the U.S. healthcare system is needed to improve their access to health services.

Methods

We conducted in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of transgender Latina immigrants (n = 10) in the Seattle, WA area. Analysis of the qualitative data involved a data-reduction process in which emergent themes were identified and coded to yield a set of core themes.

Results

Analyses revealed that Latinx transgender immigrants experience multiple levels and forms of rejection and discrimination depending on their contexts and the spaces they navigate. These experiences highlighted how participants confront frequent shifts in privilege and oppression, which shaped their access to health and mental health services.

Conclusions

Efforts to develop linguistically and culturally appropriate health and mental health services for the Latinx transgender immigrant community must take into account the multiple contexts and communities that they inhabit. Strategies to enhance the health of transgender Latinx ­immigrants should also harness the unique strengths and resilience of the community.

Keywords:

• Transgender
• Latinx
• immigrants
• intersectionality
• health access

Ethics statement

We placed the safety and confidentiality of participants as our highest priority. All participants gave informed consent to participate in the study. The Institutional Review Board that reviewed the study determined that there were adequate provisions to protect the privacy of subjects and to maintain the confidentiality of data. All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with local statutory requirements.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity at the University of Washington. Jane Lee was supported by the National Center For Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number KL2 TR002317. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. We thank Entre Hermanos for their support and guidance throughout the study.