Is There A Doctor In The House

Finding a doctor who is trans friendly is a major challenge for many trans people.

Many transgender people drive hours to find health care. These advocates are trying to change that.
The Washington Post
By Samantha Schmidt
March 17, 2019

For seven years, Kyndra Purnell could find no clinic near her home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that would prescribe the hormones she desperately needed. She was forced to rely on the black market, buying estrogen injections from the few other transgender women she knew in the area.

Then, about three years ago, she found Chase Brexton Health Services, a medical provider in Baltimore that offers hormone replacement therapy and other types of health care for the transgender community.

But the clinic was more than two hours from Purnell’s home in Ocean City. Still, every three months, she made the drive, taking time off from her full-time job.

“Down here, there’s not much help for people like us,” Purnell said. “So many people are just at a loss.”

In large swaths of Maryland and Virginia, options for medical care are limited for those in the transgender community. Their need for specialized care and LGBT-friendly providers can force them to travel many hours. Of the 1,837 patients Whitman-Walker Health — a D.C. provider that specializes in LGBTQ care — served in 2018, more than half lived in Virginia or Maryland; about 50 patients traveled from as far away as South Carolina and Alabama.

In response, a local transgender advocacy group has launched an initiative to try to close gaps in gender-affirming health care. Last fall, the DC Area Transmasculine Society, known as DCATS, rolled out an online database that allows transgender individuals to recommend and review medical and wellness providers based on their competency of transgender needs.

Here in Connecticut the Hartford Gay and Lesbian Health Collective has a list of LGBTQ+ friendly healthcare providers.

The move will expand access to care in some parts of Maryland but will still leave gaping holes in areas further from the District and Baltimore. In the western part of the state, for example, Blinder said very few — if any — clinics allow a transgender patient to use what is called the “informed consent” model of accessing hormone replacement therapy. The model, pushed by transgender rights advocates and used by providers such as Whitman-Walker and Chase Brexton, allows transgender patients to quickly obtain a prescription for hormone replacement therapy after discussing the risks with a medical provider.

Most of the endos here in Connecticut work on the “informed consent” model.

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There is a bill in the Connecticut legislature on healthcare for us. It appoints a committee to establish a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Health and Human Services Network to make recommendations to the state legislative.

The purpose of the committee is to…

The network shall work to build a safer and healthier
8 environment for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer persons
9 by (1) conducting a needs analysis, within available appropriations, (2)
10 collecting additional data on the health and human services needs of
11 such persons as necessary, (3) informing state policy through reports
12 submitted at least biennially, in accordance with the provisions of
13 section 11-4a of the general statutes, to the joint standing committees of
14 the General Assembly having cognizance of matters relating to public
15 health, human services, appropriations and the budgets of state
16 agencies, other legislative committees as necessary, the Governor and
17 the Chief Court Administrator, (4) assisting the Department of Public
18 Health to develop requests for proposals for grants awarded pursuant
19 to section 2 of this act, and (5) building organizational member
20 capacity, leadership and advocacy across the geographic and social
21 spectrum of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer
22 community. 

And who shall be on this committee?

39 (10) The executive director of the Connecticut Transadvocacy
40 Coalition;

Yikes that’s me!