Lessons from Grassroots Efforts to Increase Gender-Affirming Medical Care for Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth in the Community Health Care Setting.

Increasingly, transgender and gender diverse (TGD) youth are seeking gender-affirming medical care. Most multidisciplinary gender-affirming pediatric clinics are located in academic facilities in urban areas. To improve access to care and advance the field, grassroots establishment-without targeted funding or explicitly trained gender health providers-of multidisciplinary gender health clinics in rural and community health care settings can increase care access and lay the foundation for dedicated funding, staff, and clinic space.

Patient Empowerment Among Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth.

Patient empowerment is becoming increasingly important as health care moves toward more collaborative models of care. The goal of this study was to evaluate and characterize patient empowerment in a sample of transgender/gender-diverse/nonbinary (TGDNB) youth aged 14-24 who have had at least one conversation with a medical health care provider about gender-affirming care. We adapted a health care empowerment scale for use with TGDNB young people and collected patient empowerment and sociodemographic data among TGDNB youth in the United States over an 8-week period in the spring of 2022.