Gurlz Like Us
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Gurlz Like Us is a framework for transgender women to share their lived experiences as a means of recognizing and valuing their social and cultural resilience.
Programs
The “Gurlz Like Us” program is a comprehensive High-Impact HIV Prevention Program to reduce target population members' risk of acquiring or transmitting HIV infection, increase disease detection, and strengthen the HIV prevention, care, and treatment continuum. The program uses a status-neutral approach to offering services to area residents without regard to their HIV status. In addition, the project identifies social determinants of health that are barriers to accessing prevention and treatment services and work to mitigate those barriers. The project primarily focuses on Transgender Women ages 18-34 and their partners who live in St. Louis City, St. Louis County, Missouri, and St. Clair County, Illinois.
The projects overarching objectives for the program is to 1) Increase HIV testing; 2) Increase HIV diagnoses; 3) Increase access to prevention and essential support services; 4) increase delivery of integrated screening services for STI, 5) Distribute free condoms; 6) Increase screening, referral, and linkage to PrEP, 7) Increase linkage to HIV care among those newly diagnosed; 8) increase linkage to HIV care among those previously diagnosed but out of care; 9) Increase access to Partner Services for individuals with HIV/STI; 10) Increase medication adherence services.
Successful outcomes include increasing an individual’s personal knowledge of their HIV status and HIV/STI infection risk. Have an increase in the number of individuals who adopt/sustain individual HIV/STI risk-reduction behaviors (i.e., nPEP, PrEP), and reduced new infections, improved health outcomes, and reduced HIV-related health disparities.
T.W.I.S.T.
Transgender Women Involved in Strategies for Transformation (TWIST) is a peer-led, small-group, social-skills-building, and educational intervention for adult transgender women with HIV who have known their HIV status for at least three months. It consists of four 4-hour sessions, taught by two adult transgender women who are trained to deliver the intervention through attending a Training of Facilitators (TOF) course.
As an extensive adaptation of the Women Involved in Life Learning from Other Women (WILLOW) intervention, T.W.I.S.T. provides a framework for transgender women to share their lived experiences as a means of recognizing and valuing their social and cultural resilience. Intervention activities are guided by social cognitive theory, transgender theory, and gender affirmation theory. Intervention activities also include strategies that support gender identity and HIV-status disclosure.
Healthcare from people who care
We have been serving St. Louis and East St. Louis residents for over 30 years. Our services cover HIV/STI testing, treatment and prevention, mental health services, substance misuse support and more. We also offer supportive services like food assistance and safe spaces.