Title: Understanding the Public Health Needs of Transgender Youth Using an Ecosocial Intersectional Framework
Name: Katherine Mau
Primary Presenters: Katherine Mau
Zilber School of Public Health
Research Doctorate (PhD)
Faculty Sponsor(s): Lance Weinhardt, PhD

Public Health academics have created frameworks to help explain health disparities. Two prevalent frameworks include the Ecoosical Model (Krieger, 2019), and Intersectionality Theory (Dhamoon & Hankivsky, 2011; Bowleg, 2012). In the Ecosocial Model, systems of power benefit some identities and minoritize others. Effects of power differentials are explored on the individual, community, and societal levels. Intersectionality Theory similarly posits social systems as responsible for health disparities. This theory explores how social systems define and minoritize groups and how power differentials exist among intersections of social identities. We present a in integrated model, the Ecosocial Intersectional model, wherein social determinants of health are explored at the intersection of social identities and on the individual, community, and societal levels. This integrated theory allows for a more complex, complete view of transgender youth experience than other models and therefore can be used to suggest more impactful interventions to interrupt existing power structures and support transgender youth.

Keywords: Transgender Health, Adolescence, Theoretical Model