Many health care providers have as many questions about how best to serve their transgender patients as their transgender patients have for their doctors. A two-day conference, “Advancing Excellence in Transgender Health,” brought nearly 130 care givers from over 60 health care centers an organizations to Fenway Health’s Ansin Building in Boston to provide answers and share resources.
“For some providers, transgender care is a new territory, and the learning curve may be steep, but the need for this education is incredibly urgent. For many transgender people, accessing an understanding and culturally competent health care experience is quite often a matter of life or death,” states a Fenway Focus posting, which describes that at the conference:
[A]ttendees had the opportunity to hear from directly transgender people about their health care needs and learn how to provide care for patients who are questioning their gender identity from an early age throughout their lives.
“Some patients are uncertain, many know where the journey they want to take leads, but all need quality compassionate care from providers who can care for a range of needs,” said Harvey J. Makadon, MD, Director of Education and Training at The Fenway Institute.
The conference program drew from expertise across Fenway Health, both in terms of clinical content and educational programming, and featured speakers from our Medical and Behavioral Health departments, as well as from The Fenway Institute. Session topics ranged from an introduction to terminology around gender identity and presentation, health disparities faced by transgender people, and demographics of the transgender community to more advanced topics such as cross sex hormone therapy, trauma informed care, and gender affirming surgeries.
“It was exciting to have so many people from across Massachusetts and the country coming together to learn and share experiences about working with transgender people in medical and behavioral health,” said Jane Powers, LICSW, Director of Behavioral Health at Fenway. “We’re proud that Fenway offered this comprehensive program truly designed to advance excellence in transgender health.”…
The conversations at “Advancing Excellence in Transgender Health” reflected Fenway Health’s mission to enhance the wellbeing of the LGBT community through access to health education and advocacy. “By hosting our first ever Transgender Health Conference, we strengthen that mission and hopefully improve the lives of transgender people not only in Boston, but in all the other communities throughout the country that were represented here this weekend,” said Alex Gonzalez, MD MPH, Medical Director at Fenway. “While we still have much to accomplish in order to ensure equal access to comprehensive, high-quality care for transgender people, Fenway Health is committed more now than ever before to this aim.”
