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Date of Report:
07/2005
Source:
Pacific AETC
In 2002, the Pacific AETC (PAETC) developed a unique program to address the
issue of access to sensitive HIV clinical care for transgender people. PAETC
chose to address this issue because of the high rate of infection (47% in
San Francisco) among male-to-female transgenders found by various studies as
well as clinicians' desire to treat transgender patients respectfully, and
the lack of readily available information and guidelines. Because PAETC uses
a decentralized model for providing training and education services, they
decided to build the capacity of local performance sites (LPS) to provide
local transgender awareness training for clinicians by using a
train-the-trainer (TOT) approach to train LPS-based teams made up of one
PAETC faculty and a transgender co-trainer. The transgender co-trainers are
each affiliated with a community-based organization (CBO) and have ties to
both the HIV and transgender communities.
PAETC worked with Samuel Lurie, an independent consultant, and New England
AETC faculty, to develop the TOT. Samuel has extensive experience and
expertise in training, as well as in providing transgender awareness
trainings throughout the United States. The first TOT was held in March
2003, with 22 participants from eight of PAETC's 15 LPSs. Topics included
general transgender information, platform skills, adult learning theory,
problem-solving, and team teachbacks. Participating LPSs were required to
provide at least two trainings in the first year; 20 trainings were
presented.
In April 2004, the PAETC followed-up with the development of a second TOT
program, which provided advanced training in clinical information, workplan
development, marketing strategies, successes and challenges, and program
evaluation. In-depth discussions focused on issues identified by the
transgender co-trainers, such as concerns of tokenism, complexity of
transgender issues, safety, and trust. In the second year of the project,
the training teams gave 17 trainings to 763 participants, including 240
participants at a California Transgender HIV Prevention and Care Conference.
Based on the experiences and lessons from this project, PAETC is now
designing a formal curriculum on HIV care for transgender patients that the
training teams and other organizations can use. The curriculum will be
posted on the AETC NRC website in early Fall 2005. The model of using
LPS-based teams, consisting of a PAETC faculty member and transgender
co-trainer, with support and direction from the PAETC Central Office, is a
highly effective means of addressing the stigma and ignorance surrounding
these issues and reaching the goals of expanding sensitive, accessible HIV
care for transgender people who are HIV infected.
For more information regarding the PAETC Transgender TOT program and
curriculum, please contact Mona Bernstein at
mbernstein@psg.ucsf.edu
or (415)
597-8198.
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