Gender and Sexual Diversity Training

To have an awareness of gender and sexual diversity (GSD) is to understand the complexity of a person’s many facets—biological sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation—and to recognize human diversity across these dimensions. Discussions about GSD typically account for gender norms, which vary across cultures and time and have a powerful influence on the lives and health of all people.

Gender and sexual minorities are people whose gender, sexual orientation, or sexual characteristics differ from what is typically expected by a culture or society. This population includes those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or intersex; men who have sex with men; individuals with diverse gender expressions; and many other people, including those with culturally specific gender identities.

Understanding and applying concepts about GSD is essential to public health programming. Gender and sexual minorities often face high levels of stigma and discrimination, which directly increases risks to their health and impacts their access to services. In the context of health and HIV programming, stigma can lead to inadequate funding allocations, harmful policies, inappropriate program design, and unfriendly health services. Reducing stigma against gender and sexual minorities is essential to protecting human rights and achieving universal health coverage. When programmers, policymakers, health providers, and communities gain a better understanding of GSD, they can improve prevention services, testing, linkages to care, retention in care, and (ultimately) viral suppression of HIV.

What We Do

HP+ works toward mainstreaming gender and sexual diversity (GSD) competency in the global HIV response. The project provides expert guidance to help people understand how stigma and discrimination negatively affect gender and sexual minorities’ health and lives, and recognize opportunities to reduce stigma. We build the capacity of donors, implementing partners, civil society, health workers, government, and other local stakeholders to improve HIV programming for all people, including gender and sexual minorities. Toward this end, HP+:

Has trained over 5,000 people in 40 countries on GSD
Conducted a global evaluation on public health professionals’ attitudes toward gender and sexual minorities
Developed online and in-person GSD trainings for PEPFAR staff
Worked with local stakeholders to customize GSD trainings that are culturally relevant and to support the ongoing work of civil society in Jamaica, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, and Uganda.

Project Impacts

PEPFAR Report to Congress Features GSD Training

April 2018 —

The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR’s) Annual Report to Congress features the Gender and Sexual Diversity (GSD) blended learning package. The training package is designed to help PEPFAR improve its effectiveness at serving its most vulnerable populations with a focus on staff training. Health Policy Plus and PEPFAR built on the success of a series of in-country trainings to develop the GSD blended learning package, which includes online and in-person training components. All PEPFAR field and headquarters staff are required to spend 90 minutes participating in the online interactive curriculum. All staff must also join an in-person panel discussion with local gender and sexual minority representatives around HIV, human rights, and meaningful engagement of GSD in PEPFAR programming. Thus far, more than 400 PEPFAR field and headquarters staff have taken the online training.

More information on GSD Training

PLOS Publication: HPP Study Finds GSD Trainings Effect Change

September 2017 —

The Health Policy Project, the predecessor to HP+, with funding from PEPFAR provided Gender and Sexual Diversity trainings for 2,825 participants including PEPFAR staff and program implementers, U.S. government staff, and local stakeholders in 38 countries. Results from the first study to report on GSD attitude change among a global sample of almost 180 individuals from 33 countries were published in PLOS on September 19, 2017. The paper, Changing hearts and minds: Results from a multi-country gender and sexual diversity training, reports that attitudes toward gender and sexual minorities were more positive after the training compared to before the training. Additionally, positive attitudes toward gender and sexual minorities not only persisted 3 – 6 months after that training but improved even further. These changed attitudes were not only sustained for months after the training, but they were also associated with changes in the workplace and, to a lesser extent, HIV programming.

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