QTPI Wellbeing and Culturally Grounded Health Promotion

QTPI experience unique health disparities compared to their non-Queer and Transgender Pacific Islanders. These include physical health disparities such as smoking, heavy alcohol use cancer, asthma, and high blood pressure and mental health disparities such as diagnosed depression (Choi et al, 2021). These health disparities can be explained by settler colonial structures and policies as well as epistemicide of cultural knowledge systems, practices, and roles tied to Pasifika genders and intimacies. Few studies have focused on the health experiences of QTPI. 

According to the Indigenist stress and coping model, colonization serves as a root cause of Two-Spirit health disparities. In particular colonization generates historical trauma and intracommunity violence against Indigenous LGBTQIA+ and Two-Spirit communities (Fieland et al, 2007).  However, cultural determinants of health — identity, cultural practices, spirituality, and traditional healing practices — buffer the negative impacts of colonizations on Indigenous LGBTQIA+ and Two-spirit health (Fieland et al, 2007). In fact, many culturally grounded health promotion interventions have shown efficacy in addressing these health disparities as well as wellness outcomes related to maintaining balance between the mental, physical and spiritual components of health (Walters et al, 2020; Lucero, 2011). Despite these advances, few culturally grounded health promotion health interventions are designed to address the specific challenges to maintaining wellbeing that QTPI face.

In partnership with QTPI community leaders and elders from the United Territories of the Pacific Alliance of Washington and the Guma Gela' Art collective, we continue to conduct research to address QTPI determinants of health and to support and develop culturally grounded health intervetions for QTPI. This includes a a project where we conducted 12 semistructured interviews with local QTPI on their health experiences, interactions with their healthcare providers, and specific cultural mechanisms that could be incorporated into a culturally rooted health intervention. Findings from this study are within the following publications below.