Inequalities in Crowdfunding for Transgender Health Care

Abstract

An emerging body of research analyzes the scope, ethics, and inequalities of web-based crowdfunding to raise money for medical expenses related to illness or injury. To date, little research has investigated how transgender communities utilize crowdfunding expenses related to gender affirming medical care. Methods: Using GoFundMe.com, we created a data set of 391 crowdfunding campaigns for gender-affirming care created from 2012 to 2016. In addition to descriptive statistics of recipient demographics and campaign financials, we conducted hierarchical multiple regression analyses to determine the factors associated with financial outcomes of fundraising for medical expenses. Results: Findings indicate that the majority of campaigns were used to fund chest surgeries among young, white, binary-identified trans men in the United States. Few campaigns met their fundraising goal. Being a trans man whose Facebook community shares the crowdfunding campaign is predictive of meeting a higher percentage of the fundraising goal, whereas being a trans woman whose Facebook community shares the campaign is predictive of raising more money. Conclusion: The use of crowdfunding for gender affirming care highlights the difficulties that transgender persons face with using private and public health care programs to fund medically necessary care. Health care providers should exercise caution in recommending crowdfunding as a viable strategy to raise money for out-of-pocket costs.

New Digital Safety Net or Just More ‘Friendfunding’? Institutional Analysis of Medical Crowdfunding in the United States

“…Our choice of dependent variable is consistent with other recent studies that examine medical crowdfunding success at the campaign level (e.g. Barcelos & Budge, 2019;Durand et al, 2018). As a robustness check, we also estimated a logistic regression model using goal attainment (yes/no) as the dependent variable, with results that are not inconsistent with our main models.…”

“…Future research could move to state-level analysis, which could include state health expenditure, state safety net hospital access, and political opinion factors. Content analysis could be used to add variables to the campaign level data, such as race, gender, fundraiser age (Barcelos & Budge, 2019), type of illness (e.g. chronic disease vs. acute disease) (Berliner & Kenworthy, 2017;Sisler, 2012), and types of treatment sought (e.g.…”

New digital safety net or just more ‘friendfunding’? Institutional analysis of medical crowdfunding in the United States

“…Campaignlevel success could also be measured in other ways, including whether the goal was met, the ratio of funds pledged versus the goal, and the number of donors (Shneor & Vik, 2020). Our choice of dependent variable is consistent with other recent studies that examine medical crowdfunding success at the campaign level (e.g., Barcelos & Budge, 2019;Durand et al, 2018). As a robustness check, we also estimated a logistic regression model using goal attainment (yes/no) as the dependent variable, with results that are not inconsistent with our main models.…”

“…Future research could move to state-level analysis, which could include state health expenditure, state safety net hospital access, and political opinion factors. Content analysis could be used to add variables to the campaign-level data, such as race, gender, fundraiser age (Barcelos & Budge, 2019), type of illness (e.g., chronic disease vs. acute disease) (Berliner & Kenworthy, 2017;Sisler, 2012), and types of treatment sought (e.g., experimental treatments), and to see how those campaign features interact with society-level factors to predict success. A potential problem with using goal attainment as a measure of success is that it could also reflect more modest or more skilled goal setting.…”

What are the informational pathways that shape people’s use of cannabidiol for medical purposes?

“…The content is unsolicited, therefore allowing for unprompted narratives detailing the point of view of the fundraiser. Researchers have used crowdfunding data to explore fundraising needs and motivations for other groups such as transgender communities, people with cancer accessing complementary and alternative treatments including cannabinoids, and those seeking stem cell treatment for autism (Barcelos and Budge 2019 ; Zenone et al 2020 ; Snyder et al 2020 ; Snyder and Turner 2020 ). CBD is costly, typically not covered by public or private insurance, and unaffordable to many, therefore providing conditions for online fundraising for CBD using crowdfunding platforms .…”