ASHM Report Back
Clinical posts from members and guests of the Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM) from various international medical and scientific conferences on HIV, AIDS, viral hepatitis, and sexual health.
Finding a 'Hidden' Population: Optomising data collection to identify Trans and gender Diverse (TGD) people. Testing for HIV at a Community service in Melbourne. (Tuesday 7th November 2017) K.Ryan, J.Wiggins,T.Cook, P.Locke, A..Pedrana, K.Burgess, M Hellard, M.Stoove
Trans and Gender Diverse people are a community of interest in UNAIDS/HIV elimination program.
They are not included in the National HIV strategy or included in STI/HIV reporting. This misses the opportunity to collect data of behaviors and STI/HIV testing among the TGD population
In a STI/HIV testing service a research project was produced to collect Sentinel Surveillance data via surveys that demonstrated the importance of the data collected
Three surveys were set up to collect the data between 2013-2017
The 3rd (2017) survey asking gender identity and sex assigned at birth: Of 1220 surveyed, 88 (7.2%) reported to be TGD, of which 61 of those reported to have a gender identity that was different to the one designed at birth
Thirty nine has tested more than once at the service
* Take home: Simple changes to data collection based on community consultation had a considerable impact on the utility of surveillance to help guide STI/HIV prevention and care for TGD people