GQ Magazine, 6/22/20
The COVID-19 crisis is the most clinically significant pandemic of our generation, rivaling only the HIV/AIDS epidemic in magnitude and impact. People of color, LGBTQ folks and those with difficult access to food, clothing, shelter or healthcare are at high risk. As Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NIAID recently said, “sometimes when you’re in the middle of a crisis, like we are now with the coronavirus, it really does…shine a very bright light on some of the real weaknesses and foibles in our society.”
Gender-affirming surgeries are planned, or “elective,” operations, and therefore many have been delayed because of the pandemic. We all want to ensure the health and safety of patients and healthcare workers, but we also want to understand the specific problems for LGBTQ patients in accessing healthcare. In urban areas, in rural areas and parts of the American South, intersections of sociological and geographic factors can make health & wellness hard to achieve. These include problems with rural or urban-sprawl, public transportation, internet access, telemedicine, and racial, ethnic and sexuality- or gender identity-based discrimination.
Many patients awaiting gender-affirming surgery have had their surgeries delayed because of the pandemic. We want to understand the healthcare-access of transgender and gender non-binary persons, and if they have a trusted clinic/hospital to get screened for Covid-19. We also want to understand delays in accessing medical/hormone and mental/behavioral health, and learn if these folks have been able to access telemedicine.
This multiple-choice survey should take about 15 minutes of your time, and is entirely confidential. At the end of the survey, you will be invited to a follow-up phone conversation with a member of our team. We will discuss these same topics, but we want to make an open space for each voice to be heard. We hope to use the information in this study to help us better serve our transgender and gender non-binary patients.
We invite you to use this website to learn more about our research study. If you have any concerns or questions please see the Contact Us section of this website. To join our study as a participant, please see the Join the Study section of this website.
Click here to Access the Survey
