Pasha Wrangell has faced delays getting gender-affirming care because of red tape and limited providers. Over more than two years, Wrangell has received only about half the total electrolysis sessions recommended. Wrangell’s insurer through Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, acknowledges the shortage of practitioners.
Opponents of the wave of state legislation say the measures place health providers’ preferences over patients’ rights.
As more states restrict gender-affirming care for transgender people, some are relocating to more welcoming destinations, such as California, Illinois, Maryland, and Nevada, where they don’t have to worry about being locked out of medical care.
Josie sensed Florida lawmakers were threatening her health care and ability to be herself at school. So she left. Families of other trans youth are plotting exits as well.
The federal government’s ambitious plan to end the HIV epidemic, launched in 2019, has generated new ways to reach at-risk populations in targeted communities across the South. But health officials, advocates, and people living with HIV worry significant headwinds will keep the program from reaching its goals.
Many health professionals in rural areas don’t know how to provide gender-affirming care, leaving transgender patients with few options.
The Florida policy backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis relies on one key statistic that many experts question.
For contact tracers of sexually transmitted infections, telephones and text messages have become ineffective. Dating apps increasingly are their best bet for informing people of their exposure risks.
Even some medical experts who are skeptical of gender-affirming care say the White House is not promoting breast removal and genital surgery for teens. But that’s not what an ad, funded by a group led by a former adviser to President Donald Trump, would have you believe.
In Nevada, local health officials are assessing the threat of monkeypox, but their response may be hampered by historically limited public health infrastructure worn thin by the covid-19 pandemic.
