Participants in our study made the following recommendations for healthcare providers:
Let conversations around our gender and sexuality be led by us.
Listen to and believe young people; take their lead about their health needs and goals.
Learn some basics about rainbow health so that we don’t feel we need to educate you.
You don’t need to know everything but take time to learn the basics. If you are unsure, be honest and say that you will find out, or use a partnership model (“let’s find out together”).
Respect our gender or sexuality.
Try to avoid heteronormative and cisnormative language, making assumptions and misgendering people (e.g., if you don’t know someone’s gender/pronouns use neutral terms like they/them).
Provide services that are responsive to our needs.
Undertake a co-design or consultation process with young people when services are being developed.
Take the time to build trust with us.
Making time to undertake whakawhanaungatanga or introductions is critical to building trust with young people. It takes time and practice to do this well. Trust is foundational to facilitating disclosure.
Maintain our right to privacy.
Communicate what confidentiality means at several points during the consultation and how this applies to sharing/not sharing with parents. Clarify the situations in which confidentiality can be broken and when disclosure has to occur.
Check in if it’s okay to ask about something before asking and explain why you are asking.
E.g. Explain that all young people are offered opportunistic STI screening (due to high rates of asymptomatic infection).
