Championing the right to health
Phylesha Brown-Acton is a champion for the rights of sexual minorities. She works for the Asia–Pacific Transgender Network, volunteers for the Pacific Sexual Diversity Network and is the founder of F’INE (Family, Identity, Navigate & Equality), an organization that supports Pacific lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and their families.
“Experiencing discrimination on a daily basis and seeing it happen to my peers made me think hard about if I wanted to continue living in a society that defines and restricts me or if I was actually going to do something about it,” said Ms Brown-Acton. “I decided on the latter, and that is why I became an activist for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex rights.”
In her work, Ms Brown-Acton has seen the impact that discrimination in health care can have. “I assisted four transgender women in understanding their health needs. All of them told me that they had not been to a doctor for several years, because every time they went to see a health-care provider the experiences were bad. So instead of going to see a doctor when not feeling well, they were medicating themselves at home with over-the-counter medicines,” she said. “All of those women were later diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Their diagnosis was delayed because of discrimination. The same happens to many people living with HIV.”
Despite the persistent stigma and discrimination that transgender people experience, she believes that discrimination in health-care settings can be overcome. “We need to remove bias in thinking and decision-making,” she said. “We need to work with health institutions and practitioners so that they can hear and understand the discriminatory experiences of transgender people.” Ms Brown-Acton stresses the importance of including zero discrimination training in medical school curriculums and is adamant that people who experience discrimination — including transgender people, people living with HIV, people with disabilities and indigenous communities — must be at the table when decisions are being made.
“Transgender people have been shut out many times before. We have been strategic about getting into the meeting rooms, but there is still a lot of work to be done. We must be heard in those meeting rooms, not silenced or ignored.”
Read more in UNAIDS’ new report Right to Health.
