Hi folks,
Please bear with me as this is my first post in a community page such as Susan's Place, but I've been interested in bringing up this topic on a such a discussion page for some time now:
I've been in the medical aspect of transitioning for a few years now and have always been involved in healthcare in some way for my entire life. This has been everything from patient, student, to provider. It was only natural my identity would lead me to an interest in focusing on trans* health and that's something I've been doing for a couple years now.
What has been kind of shocking though is that in being involved in trans health, is the lack of the involvement that occurs in my local community. I've noticed that more providers want to get involved in making changes, but very few community members want to get involved in assisting with the process. I've noticed a similar trend in the research project I'm working that looks at the larger LGBT community- there's a lack of trans participation.
Granted I live in Utah and that might immediately mean the trans community is tiny, it's actually fairly large considering all things. I'm interested if any others have had similar experiences in working with the community? If so, what have you done to overcome the gap or attempt to bridge that gap? Or have there been folks that haven't faced push back in this field? I want to know of others experiences because I feel like as of lately, I've been alone on the matter.
If you're interested in finding more info about the study I'm working on, check us out on the web at: http://www.lgbtstresshealthstudy.org/
*The study is limited to those in Utah, Oregon, and Southern California. Sorry for the exclusions, we're hoping to go national in the next year or two.*
~A