This study was part of Elijah Foran’s master’s thesis in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of British Columbia. They were supervised by Dr. Hannah Kia and Dr. Drew Clark.
The project investigated the role of advocacy in healthcare navigation for those at the intersection of transgender identity and invisible disability (trans-disabled). Through qualitative, semi-structured interviews with trans-disabled community leaders, the research explored the experiences of this community accessing and advocating for health services in Canada. Findings reveal how trans-disabled community leaders define the barriers they face, develop self-advocacy strategies, shift their relationship to care over time, and connect with community to organize collective resistance. The results highlight that healthcare policy and practice can be improved by centering engagement with trans-disabled populations to identify barriers to healthcare that can be addressed through structural, organizational, and interpersonal change.
Informed by the principles of disability justice and the desire to promote collective access to knowledge, an accessible zine was developed to share findings from the study with the community. The zine is available as a graphic PDF as well as a plain text version.
Thesis in a Zine
