Dear WPATH Student Initiative Folks!

A few years ago as a medical student I designed a medical school elective on transgender health with the help of the WPATH Global Education Initiative Committee. It’s an amazing 11 session course on many aspects of trans health, and the curriculum is mapped to the AAMC LGBT health competencies for medical education. The American Medical Student Association (AMSA) hosts the course though their scholar platform, providing the administrative and zoom support as well as enrollment. Here is the course information https://www.amsa.org/portfolio-item/amsa-wpath-transgender-health-scholars-program/

The AMSA courses are supposed to be led by med students for med students and the course leadership is typically handed down to participants for the next years leadership. Now a second year medical resident, I am looking for a med student to co-lead the course with me with the intention of handing it down for next year. The majority of the planning work for 2020-2021 has been done and we have many speakers who come back year after year. The course has flexibility for evolution as well: for example, this year we have a Black Trans Life Matters Panel I am pretty excited about!

As a cis white femme, I would love to have a BIPOC trans identified coleader as keeping trans health leadership in the hands of gender diverse folks is important for the future of trans academia as is magnifying voices of color; however, I welcome all folks to contact me with interest as sometimes it’s simply a body and mind and some passion that is needed to keep the work going forward.

The course is a good amount of work – planning speakers and sending reminders in a timely fashion, developing curriculum, being present for webinars twice per month October – April (7-9pm EST), reading students assignments and offering feedback, responding to and mentoring students in the course. It is all volunteer work. The payoff is expanding evidence-based gender diverse curriculum to medical students around the world, some of which have had no exposure to trans academia and having personal contact with many of the thought leaders in trans health.

Many of us are working to improve trans health education at our personal institutions or in our city. This is one way to reach providers in training globally, and to help medical students learn how to better care for our trans/gender diverse community. The course is open to NPs and PAs but I haven’t had the energy to market to these health professions yet.

Please contact me at therealwrightdoctor@PROTECTED with a little about yourself and why you might be interested in co-leading this course with the intention of taking it on in the next year or two. You can also text me at 505-717-5177 for more information, but please don’t send me your interest statement via text.

Sincerely,

Masina Wright