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Critical hope centres optimism and possibilities for change in the midst of struggles for social justice. It was a central tenet of early participatory pedagogy and HIV research. However, critical hope has been overlooked in contemporary HIV research that largely focuses on risk and biomedical interventions in ways that obscure collective agency and community strengths. We conducted a community-based study with transgender (trans) women of colour in Toronto, Canada to adapt an evidence-based HIV prevention intervention. Participants resisted a focus on HIV, instead calling researchers to centre journeys to self-love in contexts of social exclusion. In response, we piloted three arts-based, participatory methods generated with community collaborators: (i) affirmation cards sharing supportive messages with other trans women, (ii) hand-held mirrors for reflecting and sharing messages of self-acceptance and (iii) anatomical heart images to visualize coping strategies. Participants generated solidarity and community through shared stories of self-acceptance within contexts of pain, exclusion and loss. Narratives revealed locating agency and self-acceptance through community connectedness. Critical hope was a by-product of this participatory process, whereby participants shared personal and collective optimism. Participatory and arts-based methods that centre self-acceptance and solidarity can nurture resistance to pathologizing discourses in HIV research. Centring critical hope and participant-generated methodologies is a promising approach to transformative health promotion and intervention research. These methodological insights can be engaged in future participatory work with other marginalized groups facing dominant biomedical risk discourses. Critical hope holds potential as a participatory health promotion strategy for envisioning possibilities for sustainable change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (2SLGBTQ+) people are disproportionately represented among those experiencing poverty. Both 2SLGBTQ+ people and people experiencing poverty face poorer health outcomes and greater difficulty accessing healthcare. Evidence of intersectional impacts of 2SLGBTQ+ status and poverty on health can help to inform economic and health policy. The objective of this review is to determine what is known about the health of 2SLGBTQ+ people in Canada experiencing poverty. Following the PRISMA framework, we searched and summarized Canadian literature on 2SLGBTQ+ poverty indexed in Medline, Sociological Abstracts, PsycInfo and EconList (N  = 33). 2SLGBTQ+ poverty-related literature remains sparse but is expanding as illustrated by the fact that most (31/33) studies were published in the past decade. Half the studies analysed poverty as a focal variable and half as a covariate. Intersectionality theory assists in understanding the three health-related themes identified—healthcare access, physical health and mental health and substance use—as these outcomes are shaped by intersecting social structures that result in unique forms of discrimination. Those at the intersection of poverty and 2SLGBTQ+ status face poorer health outcomes than other 2SLGBTQ+ people in Canada. Discrimination was an overarching finding that explained persistent associations between 2SLGBTQ+ status, poverty and health. Research that directly interrogated the experiences of 2SLGBTQ+ populations experiencing poverty was sparse. In particular, there is a need to conduct research on underrepresented 2SLGBTQ+ sub-groups who are disproportionately impacted by poverty, including transgender, bisexual and two-spirit populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]