People might take hormone pharmaceuticals, such as oestrogen, testosterone, progesterone and analogues of these, for a range of purposes. This can include for gender affirmation, for bodybuilding or other performance enhancing purposes, or to help manage aging or menopause. However, accessing prescribed hormone pharmaceuticals can be difficult, with restrictions on testosterone, a lack of knowledge by doctors, or long waiting times to gender affirming care impacting on access. For these reasons people might turn to self-managed, or ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY), hormone pharmaceuticals. These can take many different forms, including injections, pills and transdermal gels.

This aspect of the of the project seeks to understand the experiences of people who use self-sourced hormones in order to understand what kinds of information and resources they currently access to support their self-sourced use of hormones, and if and how they access services to help monitor their hormones. We take a harm reductionist approach that acknowledges people will seek out and use self-sourced hormone pharmaceuticals for a range of reasons, and we seek to identify where additional supports or services might be needed to improve safety for those self-sourcing. In researching hormone use across a wide range of people and purposes, we also hope to explore how information about self-sourcing moves between different groups, and how these different groups might provide support to each other.