Transgender patients experience discrimination in health care and encounter difficulty in finding compassionate health care professionals. In order to transform health professional education and service delivery for a diverse gender non-conforming community, Dr. Jeremy Sinkin, Assistant Professor of Surgery, Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, RWJMS created the video Masculinizing gender-affirming chest contouring surgery to address this issue. The video is now hosted in SOAR: Scholarly Open Access at Rutgers and can be shared broadly, increasing its reach. Other co-investigators of this project are Dr. Gloria Bachmann, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, RWJMS, Dr. Ian Marshall Associate Professor of Pediatrics, RWJMS, Kayo Denda, Head, Margery Somers Foster Center & Librarian for Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, New Brunswick Libraries, and Mark Schuster, Dean of Graduate Student Life. The project was supported by the Rutgers – RBHS – IDEA Innovation Grant (2020-2021).
Dr. Sinkin and his colleagues are planning to create other videos on the topics of Gender Affirming Surgery (top and bottom), Hormonal Affirmation Therapy, Preferred Pronouns, Psychological and Social Well-being, Inclusivity, Sexual Transmitted diseases, and Addiction. The videos will be shared with the RBHS community educating health care providers. The project partners are the PROUD (Promoting Respect, Outreach, Understand and Dignity) Center of NJ, the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, the Rutgers University Libraries, and the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.
The interdisciplinary group working on this video project collaborates in other projects, including the monthly Babs Siperstein Humanities & Medicine Seminars – Focus on Transgender and also hosted the colloquium “Affirming Medical and Mental Health Care for LGBTQAL+ Communities” (February 25-26, 2021).
