When Perry Cohen experienced an urgent health concern earlier this year, his town’s only care provider who specializes in working with LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) patients wasn’t available to see him. He went to a different doctor, then to a second. Both times, when the providers learned that Cohen was transgender, “their faces fell,” he recalled.

“It wasn’t about malice; it wasn’t about not affirming me,” he said, “but rather, they had this look of, ‘Oh, no, I don’t know if I’ll be able to help this patient.’ They didn’t want to get it wrong, but they were out of their element.”

Cohen’s confidence in both doctors ebbed.

“I felt that their fear of messing up on a cultural or emotional level hampered their ability to do their usual rigorous critical thinking,” he said.

Too often, for Cohen and countless other LGBTQ patients across the country, the problem begins not in the exam room but in the classroom — physicians lack sufficient training in how to provide competent, affirming care for patients who identify as members of sexual and gender minority (SGM) groups, especially for transgender people.

This educational gap has led to alarming health disparities for SGM patients, experts report. According to Healthy People 2020, a program of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, transgender people alone experience disproportionate rates of suicide, homelessness, substance use, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, mental health disorders, and victimization, yet they also confront barriers to accessing effective health care.

Students, faculty, and staff at Harvard Medical School (HMS) are joining forces to change that. Read more via Harvard Gazette

Harvard Medical School

Perry Cohen and his family have given $1.5 million for the Sexual and Gender Minorities Health Equity Initiative, which will train Harvard medical students and faculty clinicians to provide better and holistic health care for patients who are transgender or nonbinary.

Cohen, a transgender man, is the founder of the Venture Out Project, a nonprofit organization that takes LGBTQ people on guided wilderness tours. His father, Richard Cohen, is the billionaire owner of C&S Wholesale Grocers, where Perry Cohen previously worked as vice president for leadership development and talent management. See more via The Chronicle of Philanthropy