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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Indian J Plast Surg 2022; 55(02): 144-148
DOI: 10.1055/s-0042-1749103
Review Article

Gender Affirmative Care Clinic: An Overview

Sanjay Sharma 
1   ATHI, Association for Transgender Health in India, Board Member WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health), WPATH GEI SOC7 Certified Member, Gurgaon, Haryana, India
,
Bela Sharma
2   Department of Internal Medicine, FMRI, Gurgaon, Haryana, India
3   Medical Director IPATH (Indian Professional Association for Transgender Health), Member WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health), Gurgaon, Haryana, India
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Abstract

Transgender healthcare is an evolving multispecialty field including medical and social domains catering to the needs of a specific subset of population presenting with gender incongruence, differences in sexual development/orientation, requiring care rather than cure. Delivery of transgender healthcare is done through gender friendly healthcare facilities, which are designated as “gender affirmative care clinics (GACC).” The primary purpose of the gender affirmative care clinic is to be the “one stop solution” for a person seeking affirmative care. The main objective is to facilitate care with compassion and prevent/mitigate dysphoria. The components of the GACC should include reception cum front office; affirmative mental healthcare department; affirmative medical, surgical, and sexual healthcare department; diagnostics, legal, and ethics department, as well as inpatient care. The GACC should be preferably located in a place that is easily accessible to the community members and has an “open plan.”

Keywords

gender incongruence - transgender healthcare - gender friendly healthcare facilities - gender affirmative care team - gender affirmative care clinics


Publication History

Article published online:
14 July 2022

© 2022. Association of Plastic Surgeons of India. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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