Gender Affirming Care

Gender-affirming care is vital life saving care that is of utmost importance to us. Our care is patient centered and often looks different for each individual we treat. 

Gender-affirming care includes many types of intervention designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity when it conflicts with the gender they were assigned at birth. Gender identity is a continuum that can include woman, man, a combination of those, neither of those, and fluid. 

Gender variance is not a disease. It is a beautiful, colorful spectrum of infinite human variation that has been erroneously labeled mental illness just as homosexuality was labeled mental illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) until 1973. In some cases, it requires medical attention, and people who need this attention deserve to have access to it from providers who understand and care. The diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” is currently what allows patients to have their medical costs considered by insurance companies. Ideally, this diagnosis (and others) will be removed from the DSM and not required for medical coverage. As long as gender variance and transgender identities are labeled “disease,” discrimination will be part of the community’s reality.  

Care may include referrals to resources for reversible interventions such as counseling, assistance with changing outward appearance and gender presentation, speech therapy to modify vocal characteristics, hair removal, aesthetic injections for feminization or masculinization, chest binding, and genital tucking. Care can also include puberty blockers for youth who have not started or completed puberty, though we do not offer this service we are happy to refer to endocrinologist specialists. Older youths and adults can receive hormone therapy to increase or decrease estrogen and testosterone so they develop sex characteristics that are more aligned with their identity. These changes occur slowly and treatment can be stopped at any time when a patient has reached the level of transition they desire. Some changes are reversible and will reverse if hormone treatment is stopped and others are not reversible. Patients are provided the necessary information to make informed decisions about their health.