If you did not receive the below email, please reach out to cmacenski@bwh.harvard.edu.
Hello everyone!
Thank you so much for participating in this Exploratory Seminar. It was truly an honor to meet and collaborate with you all. I cannot put into words how incredible this group and experience was.
Below is the link to the Google Doc we worked on to send to WPATH. Please make any final comments by 12pm (noon) tomorrow (12/15) so that we can submit it by the deadline. I will explain that this is coming from a workgroup through the Radcliffe Institute and will plan to include our names. Please let me know if you DO NOT want your name included for any reason. Also let me know your preferred title on the submission.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JWKf7xS_yoE2mc988z9cVgKLkr6WsvQfV2-SHGTz8fc/edit?usp=sharing
Again, this was a true pleasure. Here is the link to our Radcliffe website: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/inequalityandbeyond . Here you will find the PowerPoint presentation, the links we shared together, bios of group members, and responses to questions we asked folks to provide prior to the seminar. Additionally, once we submit a final copy of the comments to WPATH, we will add it to this website.
Please do not hesitate to reach out. This email connects everyone together (you should be able to see everyone's emails) for future collaboration/communication.
Sincerely and with great appreciation,
Christina and John
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Welcome to the companion website for the upcoming (In)Equality and Beyond: Achieving Justice in Gender-Affirming Hormone Initiation Exploratory Seminar.
Executive Summary: The gender diverse youth community, which includes individuals who are transgender and non-binary, has long faced discrimination and stigmatization. This has led to barriers in accessing medical care and legislation fraught with prejudice. At least sixteen states have proposed bills in 2020 attempting to limit the rights of transgender youth, many which specifically targeted their right to obtain safe and medically sound care. In this context the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) published guidelines in 2011 for the transitional treatment of transgender youth. Despite these person-centered guidelines, their intentional flexibility led to dramatically different interpretations of how to best initiate gender-affirming hormones. Gender clinics throughout the US and internationally now differ significantly in the time it takes from initial assessment and the decision to proceed with hormone initiation. The initial steps also vary significantly in the types of psychological evaluations and degrees of social transitions that are required prior to the prescribing of hormones. While each methodology seeks to promote justice and excellent clinical care, the variable periods of time to pass through stages of the process can create significant psychological distress related to much-needed therapy. Herein lies an opportunity for collaborative discussion amongst experts regarding the merits of each path of transitional care and the opportunity to establish consensus and then articulate, for the first time, specific best practices for initial assessment and the more precise timeline to hormone initiation. These new guidelines could then alleviate psychological distress and be widely disseminated and used in clinical practice.
Exploratory Seminar Leadership
John Fromson
Christina Macenski