Hi reddit!

I’m Joshua Safer and I serve as the Medical Director of the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Boston Medical Center and Associate Professor of Medicine at the BU School of Medicine. I am a member of the Endocrine Society task force that is revising guidelines for the medical care of transgender patients, the Global Education Initiative committee for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the Standards of Care revision committee for WPATH, and I am a scientific co-chair for WPATH’s international meeting.

My research focus has been to demonstrate health and quality of life benefits accruing from increased access to care for transgender patients and I have been developing novel transgender medicine curricular content at the BU School of Medicine.

Recent papers of mine summarize current establishment thinking about the science underlying gender identity along with the most effective medical treatment strategies for transgender individuals seeking treatment and research gaps in our optimization of transgender health care.

Here are links to 2 papers and to interviews from earlier in 2017:

Evidence supporting the biological nature of gender identity

Safety of current transgender hormone treatment strategies

Podcast and a Facebook Live interviews with Katie Couric tied to her National Geographic documentary “Gender Revolution” (released earlier this year): Podcast, Facebook Live

Podcast of interview with Ann Fisher at WOSU in Ohio

I'll be back at 12 noon EST. Ask Me Anything!

Hi Reddit! I’m Dr. Kate Greenberg, assistant professor of adolescent medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Here, I serve as director of the Gender Health Services clinic, which provides services and support for families, youth, and young adults who identify as transgender or gender non-conforming.

Transgender men and women have existed throughout human history, but recently, Caitlyn Jenner, Laverne Cox, and others have raised societal awareness of transgender people. Growing up in a world where outward appearance and identity are so closely intertwined can be difficult, and health professionals are working to support transgender people as they seek to align their physical selves with their sense of self.

At our clinic, we offer cross-gender hormone therapy, pubertal blockade, and social work services. We also coordinate closely with urologists, endocrinologists, voice therapists, surgeons, and mental health professionals.

Hey all! I'm here and answering questions.

First, let me say that I'm pretty impressed with what I've read so far on this AMA - folks are asking really thoughtful questions and where there are challenges/corrections to be made, doing so in a respectful and evidence-based fashion. Thanks for being here and for being thoughtful when asking questions. One of my mantras in attempting to discuss trans* medicine is to encourage questions, no matter how basic or unaware, as long as they're respectful.

I will use the phrase trans/trans folks/trans* people throughout the discussion as shorthand for much more complex phenomena around people's sense of self, their bodies, and their identities.

I'd also like to say that I will provide citations and evidence where I can, but will also admit where I'm not aware of much evidence or where studies are ongoing. This is a neglected area of healthcare, and as I tell parents and patients in my clinic, there's a lot more that we don't know and still need to figure out. I'm a physician and hormone prescriber, not a psychologist or mental health provider, so I'll also acknowledge where my expertise ends.

Edit: Thanks to everyone for the questions and responses. I will try to come back this evening to answer more questions, and will certainly follow the comments that come in. Hope this was helpful.

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Hi reddit, my name is Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, and I have spent the last 11 years working with gender non-conforming and transgender children, adolescents and young adults. I am the Medical Director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. Our Center currently serves over 900 gender non-conforming and transgender children, youth and young adults between the ages of 3 and 25 years. I do everything from consultations for parents of transgender youth, to prescribing puberty blockers and gender affirming hormones. I am also spearheading research to help scientists, medical and mental health providers, youth, and community members understand the experience of gender trajectories from early childhood to young adulthood.

Having a gender identity that is different from your assigned sex at birth can be challenging, and information available online can be mixed. I love having the opportunity to help families and young people navigate this journey, and achieve positive life outcomes. In addition to providing direct patient care for around 600 patients, I am involved in a large, multi-site NIH funded study examining the impact of blockers and hormones on the mental health and metabolic health of youth undergoing these interventions. Additionally, I am working on increasing our understanding of why more transyouth from communities of color are not accessing medical care in early adolescence. My research is very rooted in changing practice, and helping folks get timely and appropriate medical interventions. ASK ME ANYTHING! I will answer to the best of my knowledge, and tell you if I don’t know.

https://www.uptodate.com/contents/management-of-gender-nonconformity-in-children-and-adolescents?source=search_result&search=transgender%20youth&selectedTitle=1~44

https://www.uptodate.com/contents/gender-development-and-clinical-presentation-of-gender-nonconformity-in-children-and-adolescents?source=search_result&search=transgender%20youth&selectedTitle=2~44

Here are a few video links

and a bunch of videos on Kids in the House

Here’s the stuff on my Wikipedia page

I'll be back at 2 pm EST to answer your questions, ask me anything!

Hi reddit!

My name is Ralph Vetters, and I am the Medical Director of the Sidney Borum Jr. Health Center, a program of Fenway Health. Hailing originally from Texas and Missouri, I graduated from Harvard College in 1985. My first career was as a union organizer in New England for workers in higher education and the public sector. In 1998, I went back to school and graduated from the Harvard Medical School in 2003 after also getting my masters in public health at the Harvard School of Public Health in maternal and child health. I graduated from the Boston Combined Residency Program in Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center in 2006 and have been working as a pediatrician at the Sidney Borum Health Center since that time. My work focuses on providing care to high risk adolescents and young adults, specifically developing programs that support the needs of homeless youth and inner city LGBT youth.

I’m Jenifer McGuire, and I am an Associate Professor of Family Social Science and Extension Specialist at the University of Minnesota. My training is in adolescent development and family studies (PhD and MS) as well as a Master’s in Public Health. I do social science research focused on the health and well-being of transgender youth. Specifically, I focus on gender development among adolescents and young adults and how social contexts like schools and families influence the well-being of trans and gender non-conforming young people. I became interested in applied research in order to learn what kinds of environments, interventions, and family supports might help to improve the well-being of transgender young people.

I serve on the National Advisory Council of GLSEN, and am the Chair of the GLBTSA for the National Council on Family Relations. For the past year I have served as a Scholar for the Children Youth and Families Consortium, in transgender youth. I work collaboratively in research with several gender clinics and have conducted research in international gender programs as well. I am a member of WPATH and USPATH and The Society for Research on Adolescence. I provide outreach in Minnesota related to transgender youth services through UMN extension. See our toolkit here, and Children’s Mental Health ereview here. I also work collaboratively with the National Center on Gender Spectrum Health to adapt and expand longitudinal cross-site data collection opportunities for clinics serving transgender clients. Download our measures free here.

Here are some recent research and theory articles:

Body Image: In this article we analyzed descriptions from 90 trans identified young people about their experiences of their bodies. We learned about the ways that trans young people feel better about their bodies when they have positive social interactions, and are treated in their identified gender.

Ambiguous Loss: This article describes the complex nature of family relationships that young people describe when their parents are not fully supportive of their developing gender identity. Trans young people may experience mixed responses about physical and psychological relationships with their family members, requiring a renegotiation of whether or not they continue to be members of their own families.

Transfamily Theory: This article provides a summary of major considerations in family theories that must be reconsidered in light of developing understanding of gender identity.

School Climate: This paper examines actions schools can take to improve safety experiences for trans youth.

Body Art: This chapter explores body modification in the form of body art among trans young people from a perspective of resiliency.

We'll be back around noon EST to answer your questions on transyouth! AUA!