Listening to Gender-Diverse People of Color: Barriers to Accessing Voice and Communication Care

Purpose: The purposes of this study are to gather and analyze perspectives of people from racial and gender minority groups in order to identify barriers to voice and communication services for these populations. Method: In focus groups facilitated by community members, 11 people in racial and gender minority groups discussed their gender-related goals and accessibility of voice and communication services. Salient themes were derived using a grounded theory approach and analyzed using an access to care framework. Results: During discussion of voice and communication as it relates to gender presentation, most utterances were speculations on the processes and potential outcomes of interventions for voice and communication; the majority of these were characterized as uninformed or misinformed. Conclusions: Future studies will need to overcome barriers related to health literacy and beliefs in order to thoroughly assess potential interest or intentions regarding voice and communication services. Additional study is expected to provide valuable information that can be interpreted using the Levesque et al. (2013) framework of access to care and eventually eliminate barriers to voice and communication services for all.

Automated summary

This study aims to gather and analyze perspectives of racial and gender minority groups on voice and communication services, identifying barriers and emphasizing the need to overcome health literacy and beliefs barriers for future research to thoroughly assess potential interest.