Trans people tend to utilize health care at rates lower than cisgender people, which commonly results in short-term and long-term unfavorable health outcomes. Theoretically informed by Andersen's behavioral model of health services use and Lerner and Robles' adapted behavioral model of health services use for transgender people, the current study examined how individual characteristics of trans people along with the external environment and health care service environment they must navigate impact their health care utilization. Binary logistic regression was used to analyze data from the 2015 United States Trans Survey (N = 27,715), the largest trans sample to date. Perception of health care provider (HCP) knowledge, health insurance status, and health care costs each produced the strongest effect on visiting a doctor or HCP in the past year. The results showed that having a provider that had some level of knowledge about trans people was potentially most critical to increase utilization. Discussion points include increasing trans-focused curriculum in health professional schools, utilizing trans standardized patients in health professional schools, and holding insurance companies accountable to provide trans affirming care.
Keywords: Discrimination; Gender identity; Health care utilization; Health insurance; Transgender.
© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.