Supporting Queer & Trans Youth: Primary Care Providers' Role

There are so many resources for healthcare professionals out there!

For the purposes of R2T2, i'm assuming that doctors here are:

LGBTQA+/SGL-friendly -- or, at least, not an avowed opponent of queer and trans people.
Primary care providers. I definitely don't have the capacity to delve into various medical specialties.
Comfortable with — or willing to learn about — harm reduction. If you're not familiar with harm reduction, please check out the articles below. It's a critical lens you'll need for your work with folx of any age in queer and trans communities.
- Principles of Harm Reduction
- What Is Harm Reduction?

Doctors may also find helpful information for your patients and their parents and loved ones in parts of R2T2 geared toward parents, educators, mental health providers, and other important adults.

A young person has an NJ tube running from their waist, to behind their ear, to inside their nose. They are lit by blue & pink light and may be in a club.

A young person with an NJ tube. Photo by Basit Abdul on Unsplash

If you're a specialist!

There are two kinds of specialists i want to address here:

Those whose specialty means they directly serve TGNC young people
- This is often includes endocrinologists, gynecologists, plastic surgeons, reproductive health physicians, urologists, and voice therapists, as well as primary care doctors.
- In addition to the practical suggestions in this section, you will have professional associations that should be able to offer detailed, field-relevant resources that are beyond my scope and knowledge.
Other specialists
- These are the majority of specialists: those who don't treat TGNC people specifically about their gender identities/expressions. This includes everyone from orthodontists and podiatrists to orthopedists and everyone in between.
- While you aren't primary care providers, you can find many helpful suggestions in this section of R2T2.

One more note: This is one of the few sections of this website that links to many academic sources. Doctors have to be successful academically, so reading journal articles will be no problem. And doctors who are associated with universities likely will have access to full journal articles of which there are often only abstracts linked here.

"I've felt happier as a trans/queer person then I ever did as a cis/straight person. I feel like who I was meant to be."