WPATH Decision to Relocate the 26^th Scientific Symposium 2020

Dear WPATH Members and Supporters:

Thank you for your patience regarding our decision on the location of the 26^th WPATH Scientific Symposium. The WPATH board of directors, conference steering committee, and our partners have been closely watching the events in Hong Kong and neighboring countries. The political unrest and the emerging coronavirus in Asia have made it impossible for our leadership team to ensure that our attendees will be able to have a safe and productive conference.

Therefore, we have decided that we will NOT be hosting the Symposium in Hong Kong as originally planned. This was not an easy decision for us, but keeping the safety of our attendees, faculty and staff was paramount to this choice. We are working diligently to find an alternative site for the conference and will do our best to keep the dates as close as possible to those previously announced for November 2020. We are eager to announce and post the new venue/location as soon as it has been secured.

Our thoughts are with the people of Hong Kong and across Asia as we wish them health and safety in these difficult times. We were hopeful that the political climate would have calmed in the region; however, with the added concerns raised by the coronavirus, leading the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam, to declare a state of emergency, we came to the conclusion that it was impossible for us to move forward with our event as planned. We hope to be able to reconsider Hong Kong as a site for our conference in the future.

Please be on the lookout for our announcement of the new location for the 2020 WPATH 26^th Scientific Symposium. We will post this information on our website and notify our members as soon as possible.

Abstract Submission – We are hopeful that many of you will attend the symposium regardless of the location, therefore we have opened the submission website and encourage you to apply to present your research and workshop proposals. We have extended the submission deadline to April 30, 2020 and expect to issue acceptance notices in early June. Please follow this link to submit: https://catalyst.omnipress.com/WPATH_2020

Please let us know if you have any questions, you can reach our Deputy Executive Director, Blaine Vella at blaine@PROTECTED.

Kindest regards,

WPATH Board of Directors and WPATH 2020 Symposium Steering Committee