Giving Compass' Take:

• Keren Landman describes the deficit of care available for transgender individuals and how Isabel Lowell is working to make trans-friendly primary care a reality across the country. 

• How can philanthropy support trans-friendly primary care? What are the consequences of excluding trans individuals from the primary care experience? 

• Find out why we may need to rethink gender diversity in economic development.

Transgender care should be primary care, Isabel Lowell thinks. It should require no special center, and unless a procedure is needed, no specialists.

The medical knowledge needed to provide transgender-affirming care is not particularly complex—“it’s about as difficult as managing menopause,” says Madeline Deutsch, the clinical leader of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Center of Excellence for Transgender Health and the author of the center’s transgender-care guidelines.

Many physicians are poorly prepared to care for transgender patients. Eighty percent of gynecologists and 81 percent of endocrinologists—both among the specialists most frequently consulted on sex hormone prescription and monitoring—have not received training on the care of transgender patients.

This has the effect of keeping trans people away from the doctor’s office. Although transgender populations have high rates of HIV, mental illness, smoking, and drug and alcohol abuse, nearly a quarter of transgender people report having avoided seeking health care in the past year due to fear of mistreatment.

When it comes to changing the landscape of transgender care, says Lowell, the real bang for the buck is in educating trainees—medical students and residents.

Read the full article about trans-friendly primary care by Keren Landman at The Atlantic.