Technology for transgender healthcare: Access, precarity & community care.

While much of the transgender health literature has focused on poor health outcomes, less research has examined how trans people find reliable information on, and actually go about accessing, gender-affirming healthcare. Through qualitative interviews with creators of trans technologies, that is, technologies designed to address problems that trans people face, we found that digital technologies have become important tools for proliferating access to gender-affirming care and related health information. We found that technologists often employed different processes for creating their technologies, but they coalesced around the goal of enabling and increasing access to gender-affirming care.

Community-Engaged Participatory Methods to Address Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Questioning Young People's Health Information Needs With a Resource Website: Participatory Design and Development Study.

Background: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ+) young people (aged 15 to 25 years) face unique health challenges and often lack resources to adequately address their health information needs related to gender and sexuality. Beyond information access issues, LGBTQ+ young people may need information resources to be designed and organized differently compared with their cisgender and heterosexual peers and, because of identity exploration, may have different information needs related to gender and sexuality than older people.

Objective: The objective of our study was to work with a community partner to develop an inclusive and comprehensive new website to address LGBTQ+ young people's health information needs.

The Language of LGBTQ+ Minority Stress Experiences on Social Media.

LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) individuals are at significantly higher risk for mental health challenges than the general population. Social media and online communities provide avenues for LGBTQ+ individuals to have safe, candid, semi-anonymous discussions about their struggles and experiences. We study through the language of disclosures and self-experiences on the r/lgbt Reddit community.

Coming Out to Doctors, Coming Out to "Everyone": Understanding the Average Sequence of Transgender Identity Disclosures Using Social Media Data.

Gender transition is a complex life change, and transgender identity disclosures are pivotal moments that delineate the gender transition process. The purpose of this study was to quantify the average sequence in which transgender people disclose their transgender identity to different people in their lives, such as medical professionals, family members, and online networks, and to understand the emotional implications of these disclosures. We used mixed methods to identify 362 transgender identity disclosure social media posts within 41,066 total posts from 240 Tumblr transition blogs (online spaces in which transgender people document gender transitions).

Mapping gender transition sentiment patterns via social media data: toward decreasing transgender mental health disparities.

Objective: Transgender people face substantial mental health disparities, and this population's emotional well-being can be particularly volatile during gender transition. Understanding gender transition sentiment patterns can positively impact transgender people by enabling them to anticipate, and put support in place for, particularly difficult time periods. Yet, tracking sentiment over time throughout gender transition is challenging using traditional research methods.

Supplementing Public Health Inspection via Social Media.

Foodborne illness is prevented by inspection and surveillance conducted by health departments across America. Appropriate restaurant behavior is enforced and monitored via public health inspections. However, surveillance coverage provided by state and local health departments is insufficient in preventing the rising number of foodborne illness outbreaks.