Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Cisgender female sex workers FSW have low rates of health care utilization and persistent health disparities. Co-locating mental health and violence support with existing services used and trusted by FSW may remove structural and logistical barriers to care.
Integrating harm reduction in health care settings can destigmatize substance use, fostering openness for substance use disclosure. Keywords: female sex worker, health care access, violence, mental health, opioid use.
These logistical difficulties can be exacerbated by individual and interpersonal barriers to health care utilization such as chronic drug use, trauma and violence, and mental illness. Despite these barriers, there are several examples of health care environments and service models that have facilitated health care service uptake in marginalized populations like FSW. Health care settings can remove or lessen logistical barriers by offering extended service hours, guaranteeing care regardless of ability to pay, and waiving requirements for personal identification documents.
Providers and staff trained in harm reduction can also create an environment where drug use or sex work disclosure is neither met with judgement nor is it the focus of the clinical meeting. Few studies have examined health care utilization patterns among FSW in the United States US , despite persistent health disparities and health care access barriers. The BMVP presents a framework for three potentially modifiable types of influences on health care utilization: predisposing, enabling, and need.
Predisposing factors include demographics and other individual-level background characteristics that predispose a person to seek health care. Enabling factors include personal, family, or community resources that can hinder or facilitate health care use. Need factors include perceived and objective measures of health conditions and health care need. Existing studies of health care access either study health care barriers and use separately, or studies conflate barriers to health care with lack of health care use.
