Understanding Health and Care Among Sex Workers

Claire Macon is a community organizer and researcher originally from the deep south and currently living in Providence, RI. Her work in the community focuses on issues related to housing, drug users’ rights, and sex workers rights. As a member of O$A, she brings perspective of lived experience and previous research on harm reduction strategies and overdose prevention. She is interested in exploring the role of labor and survival practices amongst criminalized populations through her work.Eden Tai is a queer mixed Taiwanese artist and researcher whose work aims to make people feel closer to home in their bodies, in relationship to others, and in the places they live. Her interest in oral histories and community archives guides her research as a member of O$A, as well as her personal arts practice.Sidney Lane is a trans BIPOC stoner born and raised in Rhode Island. They found their way to O$A through their relationships with local sex workers, drug users, and party-people. Leading up to this project, Lane has worked in the sex industry, within the non-profit industrial complex, and as a community organizer. Their career has centralized around care and support for transsex workers of color living and working in Rhode Island; their favorite people in their favorite place.

• 1: Introduction: Defining Sex Worker Health in Rhode Island.- 2: Sex Worker Conceptions of Health and Meeting Personal Health Needs.- 3: Community Care: How Sex Workers Care for Each Other.- 4: Primary Care and the Role of Coordinated Care in Meeting the Needs of Sex Workers.- 5: Emergency Care and Specialist Care: Care that Comes and Goes.- 6: Best Practices for Care Providers in Supporting Sex Workers and Conclusion.