Changing Hearts and Minds: Results from a Multi-country Gender and Sexual Diversity Training

Engaging key populations, including gender and sexual minorities, is essential to meeting global targets for reducing new HIV infections and improving the HIV continuum of care. Negative attitudes toward gender and sexual minorities serve as a barrier to political will and effective programming for HIV health services.

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 gender and sexual diversity attitude change among a global sample of almost 180 individuals from 33 countries were published in PLOS on September 19, 2017. The paper 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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