HIV Testing and Linkage to Care Among Transgender Women Who Have Sex with Men: 23 U.S. Cities.

ABSTRACT: Transgender women face unique barriers to HIV testing and linkage to care. This article describes the results of a national testing initiative conducted by 36 community-based and other organizations using a variety of recruitment and linkage-to-care strategies. A total of 2191 HIV tests were conducted with an estimated 1877 unique transgender women, and 4.6% of the transgender women had confirmed positive results. Two thirds (66.3%) were linked to care within approximately three months of follow-up, and the median time to linkage was 7 days. Transgender women tested at clinical sites were linked to care faster than those tested at non-clinical sites (median: 0 vs. 12 days; P = .003). Despite the use of a variety of linkage-to-care strategies, the proportion of transgender women successfull

SUBMITTER: Pitasi MA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7396274 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature