October President’s Notes

WPATH Lifetime Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award
Description: This is an award for a senior researcher in our field who has made an important contribution to advancing the knowledge and quality of care in transgender health. This award is given to a WPATH member and considers their entire body of research over the course of their career.

Awardee: Dr. George Brown

George R. Brown, MD, DFAPA, is Associate Chairman for Veterans Affairs and Professor of Psychiatry at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, TN. He has held an appointment at the Mountain Home Veterans Affairs Medical Center for the last 26 years, where he works with American veterans.

Dr. Brown has previously served 3 terms on the WPATH Board of Directors, and one term as Secretary/Treasurer. He is a coauthor on versions 5 and 7 of the Standards of Care and a co-chairman on the Institutional committee for Version 8.

Relevant to this award for a Lifetime of Research, Dr. Brown served 12 years in the US Air Force as a psychiatrist and worked with transgender active duty service members and with transgender Veterans during his 30 years of active clinical and research work in the area of gender dysphoria. He was the first to publish research data on transgender issues in military members and Veterans in the USA. His publications on transgender topics span over 30 years, and he has presented his original research findings at every WPATH Scientific Symposium since 1987 except 2, and one of those was while he was serving on active duty during the Gulf War.

Dr. Brown has published over 150 articles and scientific abstracts, as well as 24 book chapters, many of which have reported on his original research on transgender health care issues. As Principal Investigator, he developed the first large cohort studies with over 5100 persons with gender dysphoria, documenting the extensive health disparities in transgender people using comprehensive medical, psychiatric, and pharmacological data from the largest integrated health care system in the USA.

Dr. Brown is also actively involved in working with court cases on behalf of transgender persons seeking access to nondiscriminatory transgender health care and employment opportunities in the United States.  He has served as an expert witness in numerous, national precedent-setting cases that have benefitted transgender and transsexual people, including his current work as a key expert witness on behalf of transgender American military troops struggling against the United States Government to keep their careers as soldiers, sailors, and airmen.

WPATH Lifetime Distinguished Service Award
Description: This is an award to honor a senior WPATH member who has made a significant contribution to the society and transgender health over the course of their career.

Awardee: Dr. Lin Fraser

Dr. Lin Fraser EdD is a psychotherapist in private practice in San Francisco, California. As a clinician, she has worked with transgender clients for the past 40 years, primarily doing long term therapy.

She has a special interest in increasing global access to competent and compassionate trans health care and is certified in online counseling and mental health facilitation in the developing world. She has written extensively on trans mental health and interdisciplinary care and is qualified as an expert witness.

For WPATH, she was involved in the development of the original Standards of Care, is a co-author of SOC7 and is Co-Lead with Dr. Gail Knudson of the new Chapter in SOC8 entitled Education and Ethics: Recommendations for training, competency and ethical practice.

Lin is the founder and co-chair of the WPATH Global Education Initiative (GEI) (also along with Dr. Knudson) and has recently co-developed (with Dr. Jamison Green) a new course on ethics.

Lin is Past-President of WPATH.

WPATH Distinguished Education and Advocacy Award
Description: This is an award to honor an individual or group who has/have contributed significantly to the promotion of transgender health and rights through education and/or advocacy work. This may be two separate awards, and the awardees do not need to be WPATH members.

Awardee: Dr. Randi Ettner

Randi Ettner PhD is a clinical and forensic psychologist. She is the Secretary of WPATH and executive board member, an author of the Standards of Care, and Chair of the Committee for Institutionalized Persons.  Dr. Ettner has written four books on transgender issues, including a medical and surgical text, numerous peer-reviewed articles and research, and was an internationally syndicated columnist. She was the lead expert in the lawsuit that overturned Medicare’s exclusion of surgery, has been instrumental in the passage of anti-discrimination laws, provided testimony that helped establish legal precedent for the rights of transgender individuals in the workplace and appropriate treatment for prisoners, including the first case to provide surgery to an incarcerated transwoman. She is a member of the Screen Actors Guild and has appeared on hundreds of television and radio shows, including Oprah, regarding transgender issues. She was chief psychologist at the Chicago Gender Center and is the president of New Health Foundation Worldwide. She is the honoree of Randi and Fred Ettner Transgender Health Fellowship, at The University of Minnesota Program in Human Sexuality and a member of the University of Minnesota’s Leadership Program and was invited to present evidence-based care of transgender people to the Director of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Ettner serves as a consultant to corporations, including, Walgreen’s and Tawani Enterprises, to facilitate gender affirmation in the workplace.

Honorable Mentions:

Education: Jos Megens

Advocacy: Mauro Cabral Grinspan

In addition to the honorable mention in this award category, Mauro Cabral Grinspan will receive a special award of recognition for his persistent and highly effective global efforts on behalf of human rights for all intersex and trans people.

Organization: Asia-Pacific Transgender Network (APTN, Bangkok)

Harry Benjamin Lecture

Description: The speaker, chosen by the President of WPATH, is an individual who has contributed significantly to the field of transgender health in the areas of healthcare, research, advocacy and/or education.

Lecturer: Dr. Stephen Rosenthal

Stephen M. Rosenthal, MD, Professor of Pediatrics at University of California San Francisco (UCSF), has served as Program Director for Pediatric Endocrinology and Director of the Pediatric Endocrine Clinics, and currently serves as co-founder and Medical Director of the UCSF Child and Adolescent Gender Center.  Dr. Rosenthal earned a bachelor's degree at Yale University and a medical degree at Columbia University, where he also completed a residency in pediatrics. He completed a fellowship in pediatric endocrinology at UCSF.  Dr. Rosenthal was appointed as the official representative of the Pediatric Endocrine Society to the Endocrine Society’s Clinical Practice Guidelines Revision Task Force for the Care of Transgender Individuals and is a co-author of the recently published guidelines (November 2017).  He was also appointed as an author of the upcoming World Professional Association of Transgender Health “Standards of Care Version 8”.  Dr. Rosenthal has authored multiple manuscripts on transgender youth, including a “State-of-the-art” invited review in Pediatrics and an invited review in the “Approach to the Patient” series for the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He has had significant experience conducting multi-center trials and is currently Principal Investigator (PI) (multiple PI format) for NIH/NICHD “The Impact of Early Medical Treatment in Transgender Youth”.  Dr. Rosenthal has served on multiple committees of the Endocrine Society and the Pediatric Endocrine Society and has recently completed his term as President of the Pediatric Endocrine Society.  Dr. Rosenthal is now serving as Endocrine Society Vice President, Clinical Scientist Position.

Dr. Rosenthal’s principal non-work passion is figure skating.  He has participated in various adult national and international competitions, most recently in Paris, August 2018.

WPATH Outstanding Student Contribution Award
Description: This award honors a graduate student or postdoctoral scholar who has made an outstanding contribution to the field of transgender health through scholarship, research, curriculum development, policy, or has demonstrated exemplary service to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).

Awardee: Dr. Dmitry Zavlin

Dmitry Zavlin, M.D. grew up both in Germany and the United States. He finished his medical training at the Technical University of Munich in 2015. His research during medical school entailed a long-term clinical study on the quality of life of male-to-female transgender patients who were undergoing complex gender reassignment surgery. The psychometric data in his 3-year long prospective study described the significantly positive effects of surgical intervention in the MTF transgender population. These findings as well as the novel operative technique were published in numerous peer-reviewed journals of reconstructive surgery. Dr. Zavlin also earned the German doctorate degree (Dr. med.) with his dissertation that was graded magna cum laude.

Later, Dr. Zavlin spent two years as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas where he managed clinical trials, numerous big data projects, and some basic science approaches in the department of surgery.

Currently, Dr. Zavlin is a first-year resident at the surgical residency program in Easton, Pennsylvania. During his clinical training, he still continues to work on numerous surgical research projects. Long-term, he aspires to become a surgeon-scientist in an academic setting and remain involved in the treatment and research of gender dysphoria from the operative healthcare perspective.

Dmitry Zavlin, M.D. is licensed to practice medicine in both the state of Pennsylvania and in Germany. He is member of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, the American College of Surgeons, the International Society for Sexual Medicine, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, and the Texas Society of Plastic Surgeons.

Homepage: www.zavlin.com

Public Email: research@PROTECTED

Runner-Up:                                   Christine McLachlan, PhD(c), MSocSci

Honorable Mentions:

Geolani Dy, MD
Sasha Narayan, BSc

 Rebecca Nash, MPH
 Robert Craig Sineath, MPH

Philanthropy Award

WPATH would like to recognize Col. Jennifer Pritzker and the Tawani Foundation with a Philanthropy Award for their longstanding support of WPATH and of the work required to produce the Standards of Care. This year, the Tawani generously gave $250,000.00: $200,000 to support the SOC8 evidence-based evaluation process, and $50,000.00 to support the 25^th Biennial Scientific Symposium in Buenos Aires

Awardee: Colonel (IL) Jennifer N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Retired) and the Tawani Foundation

Colonel (IL) Jennifer N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Retired)

• President and CEO, TAWANI Enterprises
• Founder and President, Pritzker Military Foundation
• Founder and President, TAWANI Foundation
• Founder and Chair, Pritzker Military Museum and Library

Jennifer Pritzker is a retired Lt. Col. of the United States Army and an honorary Col. in the Illinois Army National Guard. Pritzker is a respected historian, businesswoman, developer, philanthropist and President and CEO of TAWANI Enterprises.

A visionary umbrella organization with an entrepreneurial outlook, TAWANI Enterprises seeks to make private investments that connect people to the history in their midst and create opportunities for growth and knowledge, while forging stronger, healthier communities. The company represents a diversified portfolio of brands, such as the Stone Heritage Collection, TAWANI’s hospitality arm of thoughtfully designed lodging and event spaces, the Pritzker Military Museum and Library, the TAWANI Foundation and the Pritzker Military Foundation.

Before TAWANI, Pritzker served in the military for numerous years. Pritzker’s military career began with an enlistment in the U.S. Army as a private in 1974, where she served with the 82nd Airborne Division. She continued to serve active duty until 1985, where she rose to the rank of captain, serving with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, KY and VII Corps in the Federal Republic of Germany. She then served in the U.S. Army Reserve and the Illinois Army National Guard until her retirement in March 2001. She retired with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and received an honorary promotion to full Colonel in the Illinois Army National Guard. She has been honored with more than 20 military awards, including the Meritorious Service Medal and Army Commendation Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster.

Pritzker is extensively involved in philanthropic work, currently serving on the boards of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association, the National Strategy Forum, the Pritzker Military Museum & Library, the Pritzker Military Foundation, the TAWANI Foundation, and the Leadership Council for the Program in Human Sexuality Medical School of the University of Minnesota.

Pritzker is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago with a B.A. in History through the ROTC program. She also holds an honorary doctorate from Norwich University and completed numerous Army courses to include the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Pritzker lives in Chicago and has three children, daughter Tal Hava Pritzker and sons Andrew and William, and two grandchildren. The name TAWANI was created using a combination of her children’s first names.

Corporate Award

WPATH would also like to recognize the Starbucks Corporation for its proud efforts to provide full medically necessary transgender benefits to all its employees in the U.S. in the face of tremendous resistance from the insurance companies that administrate these benefits on the company’s behalf.

Awardee: Starbucks Corporation

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In closing, all of this year’s nominees were of exceptional quality, and the fact that any nominee was not selected is not a judgment of their character or the caliber of their work or their contribution to the diverse field of transgender health. We encourage everyone to nominate your candidates (including those who received honorable mentions this year) again in future Symposium years, and to bring forward additional qualified candidates so we can all become aware of the spectacular and valuable work that is being done around the world in the areas of science, education, and justice with respect to transgender health.

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2019 WPATH GEI Programs – MARK YOUR CALENDARS

We are excited to announce some of our upcoming GEI programs in 2019.

Registration will open following the Buenos Aires meeting.

February 1 – 3, 2019 in Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA

February 28 – March 3, 2019 in Mount Sinai 2^nd Annual Live Surgery – New York, NY

April 5 – April 7, 2019 in Palm Springs, California

Other programs will be announced in Buenos Aires, we look forward to seeing you!

We will continue to update the schedule online until we switch to a conference app which will be sent via email link to all conference participants for download.

Gail Knudson, MD, MEd

Jamison Green, PhD, MFA