WPATH President’s Note – February 2019

Dear WPATH Members:

I hope that everyone is having a fantastic start to their 2019 year! We ended 2018 with one of the most successful symposiums in the history of WPATH. We had over 815 scientists, clinicians and other professionals from 26 countries on 6 continents – including 110 students and 86 from resource-poor countries. There were 774 presenters giving state-of-the-art reviews, oral presentations, panels, mini-symposia and plenary sessions. Congratulations to the WPATH symposium chairs; Drs. Gail Knudson, Jon Arcelus and Walter Bouman on a wonderfully successful program. We are currently in the process of finding a location and venue for the WPATH 2020 Symposium and hope to make that announcement soon.

In the years that our WPATH symposium is not held, our association holds chapter meetings. I want to highlight several chapter meetings that will feature outstanding sessions and workshops and more opportunities to network. These include the following chapter meetings:

• EPATH: April 11-13, 2019 – Registration is Now Open
• USPATH: September 3-8, 2019 – Call for Abstracts Coming Soon

Please check our website for additional upcoming chapter meetings. Please contact me if you are interested in starting a chapter in your region. We are working with our colleagues in Latin America to create a chapter and hope to create a chapter in Asia soon.

Another membership benefit is discounted participation in the Global Education Initiative. These are in-depth courses that cover several topics in trans health care for a broad spectrum of health care providers. A number of GEI core-curriculum and GEI-certified courses will be offered this year including the

WPATH/Mount Sinai 2^nd Annual Live Surgery Conference (click here to register now) in New York City, February 28-March 2, 2019

WPATH GEI course in New Orleans (click here to register now) from March 21-23, 2019. Please continue to check our website for additional WPATH courses and GEI-certified courses, as new ones are added frequently. Members who have completed the coursework in their practice area and additional elective courses and pass a certification exam will be eligible for certification in transgender health. Visit the GEI section of our website for more information.

We are excited that some of the first members have been certified in 2018 through the grandparenting process and we are working to get the first round of clinicians certified in the coming months as we have just onboarded our initial mentors, thank you to all the mentors who are assisting us in this endeavor. The mentoring process is essential to the GEI certification program and we thank all of you for your patience as we continue to roll out this program.

We are past the halfway point in completing the revisions of the Standards of Care V8. Our chapter groups have been working very hard. Special thanks to Drs. Eli Coleman, Asa Radix and John Arcelus who have been working around the clock with chapter leads and their workgroup members to finish this very important document. Our teams have submitted questions for the evidence-based review and hope to have answers back from our evidence teams to formulate recommendations by the end of summer 2019. Our members will have a first sneak-preview of the guidelines in early 2020 when there will be an opportunity for comment.

Finally, don’t forget to renew your membership dues for 2019. If you haven’t already renewed, please renew today at our website.  We hope to announce additional membership benefits in 2019 so you want to make sure your membership is current.

Sincerely,

Vin Tangpricha, MD, PhD

WPATH President