Addressing Health Disparities among Transgender Women

描述（由申请人提供）：Rachel L. Kaplan博士是旧金山弗朗西斯科州立大学性别和性研究与教育中心的公共卫生研究员，也是加州大学伯克利分校Mack心理健康和社会冲突中心的博士后学者。卡普兰博士的长期职业目标是成为一名独立的研究人员，专门从事国际环境中性少数人群的性健康和心理健康促进干预措施的制定和实施。拟议的培训，指导和研究计划支持这一目标，并将为她提供必要的理论和实践技能，成为一个独立的干预研究。虽然变性妇女是感染艾滋病毒的最高风险人群之一，但很少有研究来确定影响风险的最可行和可接受的方法。此外，变性妇女的性健康和心理健康知识主要来自美国。迫切需要在资源匮乏、污名化程度高的环境中，对这一边缘化群体采取与文化相关的干预措施。拟议的研究将通过以下方式解决这些差距：（1）探讨形成变性妇女性健康和心理健康所处环境的社会心理和文化因素;（2）确定如何通过调整预防干预措施来影响变性妇女的性健康和心理健康;以及（3）通过在黎巴嫩的变性妇女中进行试点测试，评估预防干预的可行性和可及性。预计这项研究将揭示中东变性妇女特有的预防需求和策略，并提供独特而有力的结果，为未来国际环境中更大规模试验的疗效测试提供信息。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Rachel L. Kaplan, PhD, MPH is a public health researcher at the Center for Research and Education on Gender and Sexuality at San Francisco State University and a postdoctoral scholar at University of California, Berkeley's Mack Center on Mental Health and Social Conflict. Dr. Kaplan's long-term career objective is to become an independent researcher specializing in the development and implementation of sexual and mental health promoting interventions among sexual minority populations in international settings. The proposed training, mentorship, and research plan support this goal and will provide her with the theoretical and practical skills necessary to become an independent intervention researcher. Although transgender women are among the most-at-risk populations for contracting HIV, few studies have been conducted to determine the most feasible and acceptable ways to impact risk. Further, knowledge of sexual and mental health among transgender women has been derived mostly from the United States. There is an urgent need for culturally relevant interventions for this marginalized population in poorly-resourced, high-stigma settings. The proposed study will address these gaps by: (1) exploring the psycho-social and cultural factors that form the context in which transgender women's sexual and mental health are situated; (2) determining how to impact transgender women's sexual and mental health through adaptation of a prevention intervention; and (3) assessing the feasibility and accessibility of the prevention intervention through pilot testing among transgender women in Lebanon. It is expected that this research will reveal prevention needs and strategies specific to transgender women in the Middle East and provide unique and powerful results to inform efficacy testing in future larger- scale trials in international settings.