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Allowing Discrimination, Administration Proposals Threaten Transgender Health and Progress Against HIV Epidemic

The administration’s proposals to weaken protections for transgender individuals that improve their access to health care, housing, and shelter services are discriminatory and destructive, and pose significant threats to the president’s stated goal of ending HIV as an epidemic in the United States. Codifying and promoting stigmatizing perceptions that remain among the most formidable challenges to progress against the HIV epidemic in the United States, the proposed rules also will deny transgender people critical services essential to their health and survival.

Discriminatory barriers to health care and housing already carry serious consequences to the health of transgender individuals, including interfering with their access to HIV prevention and treatment services. As it is now, individuals who are transgender face disproportionate rates of homelessness. Lack of housing raises risks for HIV and contributes to poorer outcomes for those living with HIV.

As medical providers, we call on the administration to withdraw these harmful policies that only serve to marginalize individuals who are LGBT. We urge the administration to consider the long-term negative impacts to individual health, our country’s public health, and our identity as a nation, before advancing such policies in the future.

Source: HIV Medicine Association