From September 21 through September 23, over 450 people joined The Fenway Institute’s National LGBT Health Education Center in Boston for our 4th annual Advancing Excellence in Transgender Health conference. This national conference is organized by faculty and staff at The Fenway Institute of Fenway Health, and for the second time was offered as an accredited course through Harvard Medical School’s Department of Global and Continuing Education. Once again, we also had generous sponsorship from the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers.
In order to accommodate as many attendees as possible while covering a wide range of topics, our conference this year was moved to the Westin Boston Waterfront hotel. The consistently high interest in this conference underscores the tremendous need and desire for training in providing care for transgender and non-binary people. Most clinicians do not receive training in care for transgender and non-binary people, and educational opportunities to learn about the unique needs of this patient population are far too rare.
This year we were also delighted to offer 20 full scholarships for transgender and non-binary providers and for students to attend the conference.
Attendees were able to participate in sessions such as “Caring for Gender Diverse and Transgender Pediatric and Adolescent Patients,” “Unconscious Bias and Its Impact on Clinical Practice,” “Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy,” “Primary and Preventative Health Needs,” “Transgender People and HIV,” “Behavioral Health Assessment and Referrals for Gender-Affirming Surgery,” “Gender Affirming Surgeries,” “What Health Care Providers Need to Know about Transgender Legal Issues,” Lived Experience panels, and more.
These sessions were led by national experts including Dr. Sari Reisner, Dr. Michelle Forcier, Joanne Keatley, Dr. Josephine Kim, Dr. Sand Chang, Dr. Asa Radix, Dr. Tonia Poteat, Dr. Ruben Hopwood, Dr. Toby Meltzer, Dr. Oren Ganor, Dr. Jeremi Carswell, Dr. Alex Keuroghlian and many others. In addition to hearing from many experts in the field, attendees heard valuable input from members of the transgender community during our panel discussions. We’d like to thank them all, as well as The Fenway Institute Division of Education and Training, especially Jack Bruno, Adina Koch, Deirdre O’Donnell and Sarah Mitnick for organizing such a huge undertaking. We were excited to share incredible expertise, experience, and knowledge with all our attendees. Thank you to everyone who helped make this year’s conference a great success – see you all next year!
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