From Margins to Mainstream: Creating a Rural-Based Center of Excellence in Transgender Health for Upstate, New York

Transgender people face many barriers to healthcare, especially in rural America. The work to decrease barriers to care and address health care disparities for this population meets criteria for a wicked problem, each of which is unique and has no clear solution. The barriers are related to the individual and society and are both formal and informal. The definition for a Center of Excellence in healthcare is loose, but these organizations aspire to serve as specialized programs that offer comprehensive, interdisciplinary expertise and resources within a medical field to improve patient outcomes. With funding and leadership training from the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars program, a group of medical and mental health clinicians worked for three years with the goal of creating a Rural-Based Center of Excellence in Transgender Health embedded within a family practice to approach the wicked problem of transgender healthcare in their region. The goals of the center were six pronged: the provision of competent and affirming medical, surgical and mental health services, training for healthcare professional students, medical-legal advocacy and patient-centered research. The team created a strategic plan, with five strategic directions, including 1) developing infrastructure and organizational capacity, 2) expanding awareness, knowledge and skills, 3) fulfilling staffing needs, 4) ensuring gender-affirming care, and 5) advancing evidence-based care. I describe our work to bring transgender health from the margins to the mainstream for our region through implementation of this strategic plan.