Vanderbilt Opens First Transgender Health Clinic in the Southeastern U.S.

Transgender and gender-nonconforming patients face a multitude of healthcare barriers, including harassment at clinics, lack of insurance coverage for gender-affirming services, and a shortage of clinicians with training in transgender care. Vanderbilt’s new Clinic for Transgender Health aims to help overcome those obstacles.

“Transgender people, and my transgender patients, all too often are overlooked and cast aside,” says Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld, director of the LGBTQ Health Program at Vanderbilt. “This is one way we can start to rectify that and ensure that transgender patients have the same equal access to high-quality care as everybody else.”

Vanderbilt’s new clinic is the first of its kind in the southeastern United States, and it will provide health screenings, behavioral health services, physicals, and hormone therapy. This clinic expands Vanderbilt’s approach to serving the LGBTQ community—in 2018, the Human Rights Campaign awarded Vanderbilt a 100% Healthcare Equality Index rating for the sixth year in a row.

Read the article on Nashville News 4, and read an interview with Dr. Ehrenfeld in Out & About Nashville.