When we talk about advocacy at FemmePharma, we always circle back to the same concept.
What can we do to make things a little bit easier for someone else?
When we think about our community—a worldwide community of women, spanning experiences, histories, and geographies—we hold space for our sisters who are part of underserved, and often also misunderstood, communities.
In today’s blog, we focus on the LGBTQIA+ community. We support the LGBTQIA+ community’s right to access health care suited to their needs and building relationships with doctors who help us be agents in our own health stories.
Health care
The LGBTQ+ Healthcare Directory, a joint venture from GLMA: Heath Professionals Advancing LGBTQ Equality and The Tegan and Sara Foundation, is an excellent place to start. The directory lists health care professionals trained in specific health needs and situations affecting the LGBTQ+ community. You can search by type of care (e.g. primary care, gender affirming hormone therapy), approach to care (e.g. sex positive, racial equity), and say whether you want in-person or telehealth and virtual support. The National LGBT Health Education Center, a program of The Fenway Institute, released a report offering an inclusive guideline for health care professionals looking after their LGBT patients.
These types of resources are critical because they speak to groups who need more than what traditional providers offer. In this case, those who are untrained in LGBTQIA+ patient care).
In general, interacting with our doctors can be a challenging experience for many people. (We are currently collecting stories from women about their frustrating experiences with doctors. If this is you, please leave a comment and we will reach out!) Connecting with medical staff trained in our specific health challenges and experiences, and potential ones, can offer a feeling of safety and assist us in creating healthful journeys. The best kinds of doctors show up 100% for us, exactly who we are, and where we are.
Other supports
This kind of attention is needed—all humans need and deserve compassionate care. Not only in terms of managing our physical health, but in terms of managing the other dimensions of our lives.
Trans Lifeline, an organization “by and for trans people,” sums up what it does as “Radical community care.” This concept—caring for each other, radically—is one FemmePharma firmly and happily advocates for.
Colage, another organization, does this by unifying “people with one or more lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and/or asexual parent into a network of peers and supports them as they nurture and empower each other to be skilled, self-confident, and just leaders in our collective communities.”
In addition to these two organizations, we have identified others devoted to caring for LGBTQIA+ and transgendered populations. They are:
Being there, and here
As a pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare company, we are as devoted to knowledge sharing as we are to providing intimate health care help to women, wherever they are in their life cycle.
As we discussed in a recent blog post, the U.S. presidential administration poses challenges to the continuation of medical research for vulnerable and underserved groups, including women and LGBTQIA+ populations.
Advocacy organizations are at the ready. When you open up the National Center for Lesbian Rights’ website, a text box pops up: ‘Your Rights in California in Response to Recent Executive Orders—Get The Fact Sheet.” (Here it is.) Advocates for Trans Equality is “tracking all of the latest executive orders and the Trump Administration’s ongoing attacks on the trans community. Our lawyers and policy experts are on the front lines of this fight…”
Follow the work of organizations, like The National Coalition for LGBTQ Health, who are backing healthcare professionals committed to serving LGBTQIA+ communities. This an important step towards becoming informed and an advocate. Do you know of any other groups? Let us know in the comments!
Learning together is going to bat for each other.