HTHC increasing access to gender-affirming care

Trans-led health coalition provides support for Hamiltonians seeking gender-affirming care while also taking steps to further educate the city’s healthcare providers

Gender-affirming care is an umbrella term that refers to approaches and aspects of healthcare supporting an individual's gender expression, including not only medications, surgical procedures and therapy, but also the use of preferred pronouns and names.

"It’s not about necessarily support for transition. We need that, but when we go to the doctor with a sore thumb, we want to talk about the sore thumb and we want you to refer to us to the medical assistant using our correct pronouns and our correct name,” explained Cole Gately, one of the founding members of the Hamilton Trans Health Coalition.

Gender-affirming care has been making headlines recently as legislatures in the United States put forward bills to restrict, or, in some cases, ban all together, this care. These moves have caused increasing concern among activists and healthcare providers as not only is this kind of care incredibly crucial for gender non-conforming folks health and wellbeing, but it is also already difficult to access, even in Canada.

Gately and others had noticed in the particular lack of competent and gender-affirming care in Hamilton and founded HTHC to help close the gap.

“Our whole the whole reason that we came together was to increase Hamilton’s primary healthcare system’s capacity to deliver gender-affirming health care to all trans Hamiltonians and also to advocate for that in other communities as well,” said Gately.

The coalition is a trans-led group made up of 182 community members, including advocates, educators, family doctors and other healthcare providers. They provide support for gender-diverse Hamiltonians navigating the city’s healthcare system, offering a twice monthly trans health clinic and helping to connect folks to gender-affirming providers and services they need.

Gately hoped that after accessing HTHC’s services folks walk away feeling empowered and cared for.

“I hope they walk away with a sense that they have some power, that they have support out there and that they can advocate for their human rights and the care care they deserve. They deserve high quality healthcare just like everybody else in Canada,” said Gately.

The coalition is also dedicated to educating healthcare providers about gender-affriming care, recognizing that this is essential to close the gap in care. They do speaking engagements and provide training and other resources for healthcare providers to increase their awareness of trans issues and their understanding of what competent and compassionate care could look like.

Gately noted that they have seen a lot of progress over the last few years, but there is still a lot of work to do.

“The future of the coalition is just continuing to grow the capacity of Hamilton’s health care system. . .Our intention was never to create one sort of hub in the center of Hamilton [for gender-affirming care] where everyone goes to one clinic. It would be fine if we had one, but we want to make sure that every clinic and every healthcare provider in Hamilton has that competency, to be able to do this,” explained Gately.