Akron-area clinics, employers expand care options for trans patients
Julie Boylen remembers the day she finally found a doctor who could help her.
It was 2014, and she was on the floor of MetroHealth’s Pride Clinic, a Cleveland-based medical office offering health care tailored to the LGBTQ+ community, including transgender patients like Boylen.
“I remember the lady telling me: ‘It’s going to be OK. We can help you out here. We’ve got everything you’re going to need,’ ” she said. “I broke down and cried on that floor. I did.”
Even now, eight years later, the memory brings tears to her eyes as she struggles to find the right words.
“It was a moment I needed so bad and it made such a difference in my life.”
In less than a decade since, gender-affirming care has expanded in the region with not only increased medical access, but also more employers insuring medications, therapy and surgery for the trans community.
But transgender individuals seeking medical care still have plenty of obstacles to face when it comes to navigating the health care system.
Boylen came out as transgender when she was 28. It was 2009, and it had been a long road for her to accept herself, spending years in the closet and attempting to change her identity through religion and other methods.
“It was really hard,” she recalled. “But I finally felt free.”
She was seeing a therapist at the time to help her work through past trauma and suicide ideation that 82% of the transgender population deals with, but was feeling misunderstood.
“They were trying,” Boylen said. “[At the time,] most of the therapists didn’t know anything about being transgender. They were trying to help with symptoms of this or that.”
And if finding the right therapist was hard, she could forget about gender-affirming health care options like hormone injections or surgeries.
“When I first came out, there was a desert for transgender care and medicine,” she said. “We’re talking a serious desert. There was no such thing.”
When she began hormone treatment in 2014 through MetroHealth’s LGBTQI+ Pride Network, which at the time was one of the only health care systems in Northeast Ohio for people in her community, she felt a rush of emotions: relief, happiness, excitement. Like many trans individuals seeking physical transitions, she began hormone therapy, a regularly administered injection of estrogen.
“I kind of blossomed,” she said. “I realized I can be okay and survive all this.”
How has Akron’s gender-affirming care landscape grown in the last decade?
Akron’s Summa Health opened the doors to its Pride Clinic in 2019. The same year, Akron Children’s Hospital launched its clinic for gender diverse youths. It was a major win for much of the city’s trans population, who would have to otherwise leave Akron and travel to Cleveland or farther to seek medical treatment, or avoid care altogether.
Studies show that gender-diverse individuals often avoid preventative appointments and push off seeking needed medical care out of fear of discrimination. As a result, they tend to have higher rates of chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes, said Dr. Crystal Cole, director of Akron Children’s Center for Gender Affirming Medicine.
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