Integrity and credibility issues in strategic information on MSM and transgenders in Eastern Europe and Central Asia countries

Abstract

The article describes the results of an expert survey of activists from two HIV-vulnerable communities (men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender people), as well as public health professionals from seven countries in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region regarding the state of strategic information (SI) regarding MSM and trans people in the context of HIV at the national level (quality, integrity, relevance and use of data). An analysis of scientific literature on studies of these communities was also used. According to the level of completeness and quality of SI, the studied countries can be ranked in descending order as follows: Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Armenia, North Macedonia, Belarus, Estonia. At the same time, information about transgender people is available only in Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine. The integrity, relevance and use of strategic information in countries mostly depend on the availability of international financial and technical assistance resources, as well as the institutional capacity of organizations of vulnerable communities, in particular in the area of advocacy of the interests of the communities they represent in state authorities. The quality of the available information is also determined by other factors: differences in the definitions of the studied communities (in particular, the inclusion of trans women in the group of men who have sex with men), failure to take into account migration processes, the size and structure of general populations (mostly unknown), the impossibility of constructing non-random samples of sufficient size or insufficient quality of construction of pseudo-random samples, lack of coverage of the entire territory of the respective countries (only the capital and sometimes large cities), etc. In general, with few exceptions, the strategic information available in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region on MSM and trans people in the context of HIV is incomplete, underutilized and of limited validity.