Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine opened The Center for Transgender Health in 2017. Here's who leads the center and how the center is doing, according to an Aug. 10 Baltimore Sun report.
Six things to know:
- The center staffs approximately 50 clinicians who serve more than 2,800 patients. The center offers gender affirmation surgery and nonsurgical procedures, such as voice therapy and fertility services.
- The center is led by clinical program director Paula Neira, MSN, RN. Its chief medical director, Devin O'Brien-Coon, MD, stepped down in November 2021. Ms. Neira is a nurse, lawyer and former U.S. Navy Officer. She is the first transgender Navy veteran to have her name corrected on her discharge paperwork by order of the Navy.
- Early in the pandemic, the center suspended gender-affirming surgeries for months as nonemergency surgeries were paused at hospitals nationwide.
- At the center, the "patient volume outstrips our resources," Ms. Neira said. The problem, she said, faces the entire American healthcare system
- "I would like to have more surgeons and to have more primary care providers who have the cultural and clinical competence to provide really good care to the community so that we can lower some of those barriers," Ms. Neira said.
- She said she would also like if health insurance was more readily available to transgender Americans so they could access coverage.