From Margins to Mainstream: Creating a Rural-Based Center of Excellence in Transgender Health for Upstate, New York

Claudia S.P. Fernandez and Carolyn Wolf-Gould

A chapter in Leading Community Based Changes in the Culture of Health in the US - Experiences in Developing the Team and Impacting the Community from IntechOpen

Abstract: Transgender people face many barriers to healthcare, especially in rural America. The work to decrease barriers to care and address health care disparities for this population meets criteria for a wicked problem, each of which is unique and has no clear solution. The barriers are related to the individual and society and are both formal and informal. The definition for a Center of Excellence in healthcare is loose, but these organizations aspire to serve as specialized programs that offer comprehensive, interdisciplinary expertise and resources within a medical field to improve patient outcomes. With funding and leadership training from the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars program, a group of medical and mental health clinicians worked for three years with the goal of creating a Rural-Based Center of Excellence in Transgender Health embedded within a family practice to approach the wicked problem of transgender healthcare in their region. The goals of the center were six pronged: the provision of competent and affirming medical, surgical and mental health services, training for healthcare professional students, medical-legal advocacy and patient-centered research. The team created a strategic plan, with five strategic directions, including 1) developing infrastructure and organizational capacity, 2) expanding awareness, knowledge and skills, 3) fulfilling staffing needs, 4) ensuring gender-affirming care, and 5) advancing evidence-based care. I describe our work to bring transgender health from the margins to the mainstream for our region through implementation of this strategic plan.

Keywords: Transgender Health; Center of Excellence; Healthcare Disparities; Rural Healthcare; Barriers to Care; Wicked Problem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ito:pchaps:244524

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.98453

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