[continued]

With iHEAR, we have been trying to focus a lot on an intersectionality approach.

When I say that I identify as a trans woman, I am not only a trans woman -- there are many more identities and layers to it, and they often interact and sometimes have a very synergistic action. s
Sometimes they aggravate the amount of marginalization that I face.

iHEAR’s values include intersectionality and the principle of equity, especially equity in healthcare, which unfortunately is missing currently. We place a lot of emphasis in lived experiences and believe in partnerships with communities, in line with the phrase that 'there's nothing about us without us.'

So it's not a team of researchers working on trans issues – it's the community working to address their issues too.

Our work started with the TransCare COVID 19 project, a community based participatory research project. In this, we were trying to find out 'What's the experience of trans people during the pandemic, and how that affected their mental health.'

The other community participatory research project is the iHEAR Vaccine Equity Project, that we're doing with two marginalized communities — persons with disabilities, and transgender and nonbinary persons.

Here we're trying to find out, 'What are the barriers that these two communities face in accessing vaccination?’

We are also going to talk to the people who are involved in providing vaccination from the public health system and see what challenges they also have and create some kind of recommendations.

We also believe that to bring about policy changes, we need evidence and we need to bring that evidence to policymakers.

So we have been bringing that evidence by working with the community to bring about real, on-the-ground change.

We don't want to just publish in Lancet and feel happy about it, unless the life of an ordinary trans person changes on the ground.