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Tonia Poteat

Professor in the School of Nursing
School of Nursing
Box 3322 DUMC, Durham, NC 27710

Overview


Dr. Poteat is a professor in the Duke University School of Nursing and co-director of the Duke SGM Wellness Program. Her research, teaching, and clinical practice focus on HIV and LGBTQ health with particular attention to the health of transgender communities. Her research attends to the role of intersectional structural stigma in driving health inequities and seeks to identify strategies to advance health justice. Certified as an HIV Specialist by the American Academy of HIV Medicine and Gender Specialist by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, she is a global leader in HIV research and care with transgender persons. She is an associate editor for the journal LGBT Health and serves on the Department of Health and Human Services Adolescent and Adult HIV Treatment Guidelines panel. She founded and co-leads the Inter-CFAR Transgender Health Scientific Working Group and serves on the board of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.

Current Appointments & Affiliations


Professor in the School of Nursing · 2024 - Present School of Nursing
Research Professor of Global Health · 2024 - Present Duke Global Health Institute, University Institutes and Centers

In the News


Published February 3, 2025
Celebrating Duke’s New Full Professors
Published December 13, 2023
For Transgender Communities, a Cost for Being Your True Self

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Recent Publications


Preference for Long-Acting Injectable PrEP Compared With Daily Oral PrEP Among Transgender Women in the U.S.: Findings From a Multisite Cohort.

Journal Article AJPM Focus · April 2025 INTRODUCTION: Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) use among transgender women in the U.S. has not reached levels optimal to change the trajectory of the HIV epidemic owing to multilevel barriers. Long-acting injectable PrEP received Food and Drug Administratio ... Full text Link to item Cite

HIV seropositivity and viral non-suppression in transgender, non-binary, and gender-diverse people in primary care receiving gender-affirming hormone therapy in the USA between 2013 and 2019 (LEGACY): an observational, longitudinal, cohort study.

Journal Article The lancet. HIV · April 2025 BackgroundGender-affirming hormone therapy is medically necessary for many transgender, non-binary, and gender-diverse (trans) individuals and might improve HIV clinical outcomes for trans people. This study evaluated gender-affirming hormone ther ... Full text Cite

Phenotyping to Identify Mental Health Trends of Transgender Individuals Using Private Commercial Insurance Data in the United States.

Journal Article LGBT health · April 2025 Purpose: We evaluated the performance of computational phenotypes (CPs) in commercial insurance claims for identifying transgender (TG) individuals and assessed trends in population size and depression and anxiety prevalence of the TG population. Methods: ... Full text Cite
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Recent Grants


Creating Access to Resources and Economic Support (CARES)

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Institutes of Health · 2023 - 2027

Transgender-Specific Differentiated HIV Care: An Implementation Science Study

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Institute of Mental Health · 2023 - 2027

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Education, Training & Certifications


Johns Hopkins Unversity, Bloomberg School of Public Health · 2012 Ph.D.