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Socially distant and out of reach: Unintended consequences of COVID-19 prevention efforts on transgender and gender non-binary populations in Puerto Rico

Substance use disorders in the United States disproportionately affect minorities and socially vulnerable populations, particularly those at the intersection of racial and sexual minority status. Preceded by over a century-long subjugation to the U.S. government, a recent financial crisis, the devas...

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Autores principales: Melin, Kyle, Santiago Quiñones, Darlene, Rodríguez-Díaz, Carlos E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7855792/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33279333
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2020.108209
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author Melin, Kyle
Santiago Quiñones, Darlene
Rodríguez-Díaz, Carlos E.
author_facet Melin, Kyle
Santiago Quiñones, Darlene
Rodríguez-Díaz, Carlos E.
author_sort Melin, Kyle
collection PubMed
description Substance use disorders in the United States disproportionately affect minorities and socially vulnerable populations, particularly those at the intersection of racial and sexual minority status. Preceded by over a century-long subjugation to the U.S. government, a recent financial crisis, the devastating hurricanes of 2017, and a string of earthquakes at the end of 2019 and early 2020, the current COVID-19 pandemic is only the most recent disaster to disrupt the local health care system in Puerto Rico. However, the effects of the current emergency and imposed social distancing measures have only exacerbated the underlying vulnerabilities of the transgender and gender non-conforming (GNC) population made bare during these other recent disasters. Clinics and providers who treat patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) in Puerto Rico have had to develop their own safety protocols to limit the spread of the virus while trying to optimize current treatment protocols to maintain the stability of their patients. Despite these measures, we have observed a reduction in the ability of local organizations to outreach to already disconnected transgender and GNC individuals with OUD. For example, due to the government-imposed curfew that began March 15, 2020, some providers engaged in outreach with transgender and GNC sex workers have eliminated nighttime outreach completely. Additionally, a research project surveying all buprenorphine prescribers in Puerto Rico has found that few have received training in treating this vulnerable population, and even fewer report that they are currently providing treatment for transgender or GNC individuals. If Puerto Rico is to address this problem of gross under-representation of a population known to be disproportionately affected by substance use disorders, Puerto Rico must address structural factors to prevent this disparity from widening further during the inevitable future disasters our health care system will face.
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spelling pubmed-78557922022-03-01 Socially distant and out of reach: Unintended consequences of COVID-19 prevention efforts on transgender and gender non-binary populations in Puerto Rico Melin, Kyle Santiago Quiñones, Darlene Rodríguez-Díaz, Carlos E. J Subst Abuse Treat Article Substance use disorders in the United States disproportionately affect minorities and socially vulnerable populations, particularly those at the intersection of racial and sexual minority status. Preceded by over a century-long subjugation to the U.S. government, a recent financial crisis, the devastating hurricanes of 2017, and a string of earthquakes at the end of 2019 and early 2020, the current COVID-19 pandemic is only the most recent disaster to disrupt the local health care system in Puerto Rico. However, the effects of the current emergency and imposed social distancing measures have only exacerbated the underlying vulnerabilities of the transgender and gender non-conforming (GNC) population made bare during these other recent disasters. Clinics and providers who treat patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) in Puerto Rico have had to develop their own safety protocols to limit the spread of the virus while trying to optimize current treatment protocols to maintain the stability of their patients. Despite these measures, we have observed a reduction in the ability of local organizations to outreach to already disconnected transgender and GNC individuals with OUD. For example, due to the government-imposed curfew that began March 15, 2020, some providers engaged in outreach with transgender and GNC sex workers have eliminated nighttime outreach completely. Additionally, a research project surveying all buprenorphine prescribers in Puerto Rico has found that few have received training in treating this vulnerable population, and even fewer report that they are currently providing treatment for transgender or GNC individuals. If Puerto Rico is to address this problem of gross under-representation of a population known to be disproportionately affected by substance use disorders, Puerto Rico must address structural factors to prevent this disparity from widening further during the inevitable future disasters our health care system will face. Elsevier Inc. 2021-03 2020-11-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7855792/ /pubmed/33279333 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2020.108209 Text en © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Melin, Kyle
Santiago Quiñones, Darlene
Rodríguez-Díaz, Carlos E.
Socially distant and out of reach: Unintended consequences of COVID-19 prevention efforts on transgender and gender non-binary populations in Puerto Rico
title Socially distant and out of reach: Unintended consequences of COVID-19 prevention efforts on transgender and gender non-binary populations in Puerto Rico
title_full Socially distant and out of reach: Unintended consequences of COVID-19 prevention efforts on transgender and gender non-binary populations in Puerto Rico
title_fullStr Socially distant and out of reach: Unintended consequences of COVID-19 prevention efforts on transgender and gender non-binary populations in Puerto Rico
title_full_unstemmed Socially distant and out of reach: Unintended consequences of COVID-19 prevention efforts on transgender and gender non-binary populations in Puerto Rico
title_short Socially distant and out of reach: Unintended consequences of COVID-19 prevention efforts on transgender and gender non-binary populations in Puerto Rico
title_sort socially distant and out of reach: unintended consequences of covid-19 prevention efforts on transgender and gender non-binary populations in puerto rico
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7855792/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33279333
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2020.108209
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