PolicyLab

All youth deserve the healthiest start to life possible, but transgender and gender-expansive youth face unique challenges that impact their physical and mental health—challenges that can stem not just from their medical needs, but a health care environment that doesn’t sufficiently support them.

This week, we released new policy briefs focused on two of the main barriers transgender and gender-expansive youth can face on their paths to becoming healthy, productive adults. The first brief, “Importance of Improving Insurance Coverage for Transgender and Gender-expansive Youth,” shares research on the problems these youth encounter when trying to access quality health care coverage despite federal rules protecting their health care rights. The second brief, “Ensuring Providers Have the Knowledge and Support Needed to Care for Transgender Youth,” outlines how insufficient provider training and structural challenges (with electronic medical records or physical spaces) create negative experiences for transgender and gender-expansive youth that can act as barriers to accessing necessary primary care. Both briefs include evidence-based recommendations to ameliorate the problems this vulnerable population faces.