HIV care built with and for ITGNC people in Kenya.
A community-led, rights-based response that closes the gap between Intersex, Transgender, and Gender Non-Conforming people and the HIV prevention, treatment, and care they are entitled to.
Health equity starts with being seen.
ITGNC people in Kenya face steep barriers to HIV prevention, care, and treatment — barriers built from stigma, invisibility in health data, and services that were never designed with them in mind. Jinsiangu's HIV Programme exists to take those barriers down.
The programme responds directly to the health disparities ITGNC communities face, particularly the obstacles to accessing HIV prevention, care, and treatment, alongside comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services.
Rather than treating HIV in isolation, we combine biomedical, behavioral, and structural interventions — so a person's HIV care sits alongside gender-affirming care, protection from violence, mental health support, and a path to economic stability.
Three interlocking interventions
- Behavioral — peer-led knowledge and skills that reduce risk
- Biomedical — gender-sensitive prevention, testing, and treatment
- Structural — justice, safety, and policy that make care possible
Three interventions, one continuum of care.
Each pillar addresses a different layer of the same problem — knowledge, health services, and the systems around them.
Behavioral
Peer-led, culturally competent programming that gives ITGNC people the knowledge and confidence to reduce HIV risk and seek out HIV and STI services on their own terms.
Biomedical
Prevention, early diagnosis, and treatment delivered through differentiated HIV services integrated with sexual, reproductive, and gender-affirming healthcare.
Structural
Work on justice, violence prevention, mental health, economic empowerment, and policy reform — the conditions that decide whether care is reachable at all.
What the programme is working toward.
Equitable access to ITGNC-affirming care
Close healthcare disparities and expand access to HIV prevention, testing, treatment, and integrated care built around ITGNC people, not retrofitted for them.
Community power and participation
Raise health literacy, grow community engagement, and strengthen the capacity of community-based organizations, advocacy groups, and local health systems.
An enabling legal and policy environment
Challenge discriminatory laws and practices, advance ITGNC rights, and secure a real seat at the table in legal and policy processes.
What community-led advocacy has already changed.
None of this happened by request — it happened through data, coalition-building, and years of showing up in the room where policy gets written.
The first size estimation to count transgender people
Alongside Trans* Alliance Kenya and Coast Trans Network, under the National Trans Advocacy Network, Jinsiangu mobilized transgender members for Kenya's first Key Population size estimation study to include transgender people. The study identified 4,305 transgender people across FSW and MSM hotspots in 34 counties — data the national programme used to argue for HIV prevention built specifically for transgender people.
Read the size estimation report ↗
Transgender people named in KASF II
Evidence-based advocacy by Jinsiangu, Coast Trans Network, Trans* Alliance Kenya, and other trans-led organizations secured formal recognition of transgender people as a key population — alongside female sex workers, men who have sex with men, and people who inject drugs — in the Kenya AIDS Strategic Framework II. That recognition created lines of accountability for delivering tailored HIV programming.
Read the Kenya Aids Strategic Framework report ↗
National guidelines for transgender HIV programming
Working with NASCOP, implementing partners, donors, and fellow trans-led organizations, Jinsiangu helped author Kenya's National Guidelines for STI and HIV Programming with Transgender People — the standard that lets HIV programmes for transgender people scale up consistently, wherever they're delivered.
Read the KP National Guidlines report ↗
The first fully integrated ITGNC facility
In partnership with the Nairobi County and Westlands Sub-County AIDS & STI Coordinators, Jinsiangu became the first ITGNC-led organization to fully integrate culturally competent HIV and SRHR services into a public facility — Westlands Hospital — pairing HIV prevention, treatment, and STI care with the broader support ITGNC patients actually need.
A distinct category in Kenya's key population study
Jinsiangu served as the Nairobi transgender study site for Kenya's first Integrated Bio-Behavioral Study to count transgender people as their own category, rather than folding them into other groups. The disaggregated data now shapes HIV and STI policy at national and county level, and gives a clearer picture of risk by population, county, and typology.
Read the IBBS report ↗
What still stands in the way.
Progress on paper hasn't erased the conditions on the ground. Four challenges shape what the programme has to solve for every day.
Legal & policy gaps
Kenya still has no comprehensive legal protection against discrimination based on gender identity or expression, despite recent court decisions affirming intersex and transgender rights. That gap limits access to healthcare, education, employment, and social protection.
Rising anti-gender narratives
Coordinated anti-gender campaigns have sharpened stigma, misinformation, and hostility toward ITGNC communities — shrinking civic space and making it harder and riskier to reach HIV, SRHR, and mental health services.
Funding uncertainty
Cuts to United States Government HIV funding have disrupted service delivery, outreach, and organizational sustainability, while domestic and donor resources remain too limited to guarantee continuity at scale.
Barriers to service uptake
Past experiences of stigma, limited gender-affirming and integrated care, and mistrust of public health systems still keep many ITGNC people from timely HIV prevention, testing, and treatment.
No ITGNC person in Kenya left behind in the fight against HIV.
Jinsiangu and the National Trans Advocacy Network are expanding this programme's reach — pressing for policy reform, wider healthcare access, and deeper community engagement to close the disparities that remain.
Explore the programme