Trans or Gender Non-Conforming With HIV? You Can Finally Be Heard

Are you T+ (poz trans or gender non-conforming)? It's time to share your experiences in the confidential national survey by Positively Trans. The first-of-its-kind study seeks to determine the obstacles to care faced by trans people living with HIV.

“As transgender people living with HIV/AIDS, we are capable of forming our own network, telling our own stories, and developing our own strategies for advocacy,” said Cecilia Chung about Positively Trans and its community-driven survey. Chung chairs the Sero Project board of directors and is a senior strategist at the Transgender Law Center, which sponored the survey.

The Positively Trans survey is a groundbreaking community-led needs assessment focusing on poz transgender men and women, and gender non-conforming people living in the U.S..

“This survey is a groundbreaking opportunity to not only highlight our needs, but also our resilience when there aren't resources available,” Chung added.

As Plus magazine has previously reported, trans women have some of the highest rates of HIV infection, yet too few comprehensive studies have examined the needs of the transgender community.

Positively Trans was developed as “a response to the structural inequalities that drive the high rate of HIV/AIDS and poor health outcomes for transgender people, especially transgender women of color,” noted Transgender Law Center in a press release.

The survey offers trans people living with HIV a safe and anonymous forum to share their experiences with discrimination, violence, and other barriers to health care, housing, employment, relationships, and community inclusion.

“This survey is for us and will not be done without us,” said another Positively Trans board member, Tiommie Luckett from Arkansas. “Every trans woman and man living with HIV should fill out this survey because we need people to know that we’re here, and that we can develop our own solutions and strategies to take care of ourselves.”

Positively Trans is supported by the Elton John AIDS Foundation. The survey’s findings, will be released in October, and may ultimately inform policy and program recommendations, prioritization of needs, strategic planning and advocacy efforts.

You can take the Positively Trans survey, in English or Spanish, here.

Positively Trans should not be confused with the 2015 U.S. Trans Survey sponsored by the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE). The largest survey ever devoted to the lives and experiences of trans people, the NCTE survey is a follow-up to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, the results of which served as the basis for the troubling 2011 report on trans discrimination, Injustice At Every Turn.

While the Positively Trans survey is open now, the NCTE survey opens up on August 19th. As these surveys may influence how future resources are allocated, all trans and gender nonconforming individuals are strongly encouraged to fill them out.