Health Correlates of Criminal Justice Involvement in 4,793 Transgender Veterans

Transgender (TG) persons are overrepresented in prison settings and in the U.S. veteran population. Health disparities studies of large populations of transgender people involved with the criminal justice system have not been published to date. We studied a large cohort of TG veterans who received care in Veterans Health Administration (VHA) facilities during 2007-2013 (n = 4,793) and a 3:1 matched control group of veterans without known TG identification (n = 13,625). Three hundred twenty six (n = 138 TG, 188 non-TG) had received VHA services in programs designed to address the needs of justice involved (JI) veterans. We linked patients in each of the three groups to their medical and administrative data. TG veterans were more likely to be justice involved than controls (2.88% vs. 1.38%; P