About
What is the Gender-Affirming Care Assistance Card?
The Gender-Affirming Care Assistance Card is a resource for healthcare providers with quick tips about gender-affirming care that can fit inside a wallet or hang from a name badge for easy access. It is also a way for transgender and gender-diverse folks to open a conversation about gender-affirming care quickly and easily with their healthcare providers.
Who can use the Gender-Affirming Care Assistance Card?
The Gender-Affirming Care Assistance Card is meant for healthcare providers who care for patients/clients of diverse gender identities. It is also designed to help patients/clients provide basic information about gender-affirming care in an accessible format for healthcare providers involved in their care.
How was the Gender-Affirming Care Assistance Card developed?
The Gender-Affirming Care Assistance Card was designed by Lauren Catlett, MSN, RN, CNL (they/them), an artist and nurse scholar studying gender-affirming care for transgender and gender-diverse older adults.
The idea for this card arose from a conversation between Lauren and a transgender friend who described the challenges of providing education about her gender identity to healthcare providers unfamiliar with gender-affirming care. She wondered what a user-friendly resource on gender-affirming care for healthcare providers would look like.
A prototype for the Gender-Affirming Care Assistance Card was developed by Lauren and reviewed by transgender and gender-diverse persons as well as nurses, physicians, social workers, and mental health counselors. The resource that is now available combines evidence from recognized sources and valuable insight from patients and healthcare providers.
Has the Gender-Affirming Care Assistance Card been tested?
Although the Gender-Affirming Care Assistance Card has been reviewed by over a dozen healthcare providers and transgender and gender-diverse folks, it has not been formally tested. Your experiences using this resource will help us understand its usefulness for patients and healthcare providers and how we can make it better. Please contact us with your stories and suggestions!