Challenges and Successes in Evaluating HIV Prevention for Young Transgender Women—Building Skills, Maintaining Trust

Transgender women, defined in the literature¹ as people assigned a male sex at birth who identify their gender as woman, female, or feminine, are at high risk of HIV infection. To say that the burden of HIV among transgender women is disproportionately high greatly understates this inequity: transgender women have an estimated 48.8-fold increased odds of contracting HIV compared with of adults of reproductive age globally.¹ Prevalence rates of HIV in transgender women are 21.7% and 19.1% in the United States and worldwide, respectively.¹ Within this population, black transgender women are at even higher risk than their white or Latina peers.²