Doctors often aren’t trained on the preventive health care needs of gender-diverse people – as a result, many patients don’t get the care they need | Health & Fitness

In 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services clarified that preventive care services are available under the Affordable Care Act, regardless of gender identity.

However, the main organizations guiding providers and insurance coverage regarding breast, cervical and prostate cancer screening continue to use an approach based on the ingrained binary male-female model approach.

For example, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force still gears its recommendations for breast and cervical cancer screenings toward cisgender women, with little guidance on how to apply them to transgender patients.

This is driven in part by a lack of data on how to best screen transgender patients for cancer.

Insurance coverage and companies also create hurdles. Gender-diverse patients are more likely to be uninsured or underinsured – making it much harder for them to access preventive medical care. A gender identity mismatch in an electronic medical record can trigger a denial for a cancer screening.

Fortunately, the medical field is recognizing that gender-diverse patients have unique health care needs.

Since 2017, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has published recommendations for health care providers on making their practices open and inclusive for all individuals. Training all staff and creating an open office space without a gendered approach is a key recommendation.

Now over 20 medical organizations give similar guidance, with hopes of increasing inclusion through the health care system.

Another encouraging sign is that some medical schools are integrating gender-affirming care into their coursework. The University of Louisville in Kentucky reports that it now offers 50 hours of LGBTQ+-specific topics. And a faculty-student team at the Boston University School of Medicine has developed a tool to help medical schools assess and improve how they educate students to provide sexual and gender-minority health care.

I’m hopeful that the next generation of health care providers will be a force for change at their institutions; in my experience, incoming medical students are more aware of health disparities than their older generations of educators.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Jenna Sizemore, West Virginia University. If you found it interesting, you could subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Jenna Sizemore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.