HealthQueer Alliance at UF is educating the medical community about transgender health concerns.
To conclude Trans Health Month, the alliance will host Trans Health Night at Equal Access, located at 1707 N. Main St.
The clinic is part of a network of UF student-run clinics that provide free services, and today at 6 p.m., it will be open only to transgender people for the first time, said alliance president and UF medical student Ansley Schulte.
About half of transgender and gender-nonconforming people reported they had to educate their healthcare providers about their identities, according to Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, released in 2011.
But the alliance wants to change this, Schulte, 23, said. Throughout the month, the group has worked with UF LGBTQ+ Affairs to educate health science majors by organizing a series of talks and workshops ranging from mental health in trans communities to cultural competency.
"It’s the beginning of a process to provide a safe space for trans people for whatever care they may need and then to have our students apply what they have learned," she said.
UF women’s studies alumna Reilly Clemens, 28, who identifies as a trans woman, said transgender people need to be accounted for and included in healthcare.
"There’s a lot of social exclusion because there’s misconceptions about what it means to be trans and perceived as sexually perverse," said Clemens, a first-year sociology doctoral student at Florida State University.
