What are transgender women’s HIV prevention needs?

Transgender is an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity and expression does not conform to norms and expectations traditionally associated with their sex assigned at birth. Transgender persons may self-identify as transgender, female, male, trans-woman or -man, transsexual, cross-dresser, bigender, gender queer, gender questioning, MtF, FtM or one of many other transgender identities, and may express their genders in a variety of masculine, feminine and androgynous ways. Transgender persons may prefer and identify with certain terms and not others, so it is best to ask participants and clients what they prefer. For this fact sheet, we use the term transgender women. The transgender community is diverse and more research is needed. From what we know, transgender women have higher rates of HIV and HIV-related risks than transgender men. While this fact sheet focuses on transgender women, we are developing other fact sheets on transgender men and the general transgender population.