Transgender messaging gap: Including trans and gender nonconforming people in public health campaigns

Transgender people face significant health disparities including difficulties with accessing culturally competent and adequately trained providers; insurance coverage exclusions for transition-related care; inaccessible, normatively gendered health care spaces; and low trust of providers and health delivery systems. They are also at higher risk of conditions such as HIV/STIs and poor mental health; cancer risks remain under-researched and therefore unknown. Public health campaigns providing messaging about gender-related cancers (e.g. testicular and breast cancer) and sexual health often rely upon stereotypical masculine and feminine messaging to reach the general population of men and women. Trans bodies and lives, however, are more complicated. For example, a trans woman (i.e. a person assigned male at birth and who identifies as a woman) may need preventive services for testicular and prostate cancer, in addition to mammograms, if she has taken estrogen therapy. This creates a public health landscape wherein trans people, 1) may not be adequately informed of their risk, and 2) may be alienated from preventive health care services, leading to both late diagnosis and treatment.  The availability of numerous media channels allows for very specific audience segmentation methods. These methods give us the opportunity to reach minority populations in a targeted way and could be used to disseminate relevant, culturally competent health messaging to trans populations.