CAHS partners to host an educational event dedicated to transgender health

The idea to host an event dedicated to transgender health came to Savannah Shanley last summer while she was running on a treadmill at Planet Fitness. A student in UC’s Speech Language Hearing Sciences program, Shanley was collecting data on treatment trends of gender-diverse patients during the COVID-19 pandemic at the Voice & Swallow Mechanics Lab at UC’s College of Allied Health Sciences when she recognized a need for increased community education on gender diversity. 

“A lot of patients we surveyed said they didn’t know how to access certain gender healthcare treatments, or they had insurance problems, mental health issues, or a lack of social support,” recalls Shanley, who will earn her bachelor’s degree this month.

Shanley immediately shared her idea with Victoria McKenna, PhD, CCC-SLP, who oversees the Voice & Swallow Mechanics Lab and suggested that Shanley pitch the idea as her senior capstone project. With help from McKenna, her capstone student partners Victoria Romano and Cailynn Beck, and her faculty capstone mentor Amy Hobek, PhD, CCC-SLP, Shanley’s idea was brought to life on April 14 with Transforming Healthcare: Equity and Access for Transgender Health, a four-hour in-person event held at UC’s Kresge Auditorium that featured a series of expert speakers, a panel of provider and patient perspectives, and informational exhibitor booths featuring organizations like Equitas Health, a nonprofit healthcare system serving LGBTQ+ patients in the Midwest. 

“There was such a diversity within the audience; it wasn’t just healthcare providers or speech-language pathologists, but we had nursing professionals, medical students, non-healthcare students, community members, and community groups," says McKenna, who also serves as an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders and secondary faculty in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at UC.

McKenna was joined on stage by Sarah Pickle, MD, a physician at UC Health and assistant professor of Family and Community Medicine at UC’s College of Medicine, who provided education on the topic of transgender health; and Melanie Thomas-Castillo, PsyD, a clinical psychologist at UC Health and assistant professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at UC’s College of Medicine, who spoke about mental health and barriers to care.

Not only did the audience members’ professions and areas of study vary, but their understanding of transgender health also varied vastly. Some audience members asked questions about terminology like misgendering (this occurs when someone describes a person using language that doesn’t align with their affirmed gender), while other members asked more specific questions, like the medical student who inquired about how to provide affirming care if a patient hasn’t self-identified (affirming care includes assisting patients during gender transition, using the correct pronouns, calling patients by their preferred names, and helping patients access the right care). 

Integrating gender diversity into the curriculum and hosting educational events for community members is especially important in a state like Ohio, where healthcare providers can legally refuse to provide services that violate their moral or religious beliefs, McKenna says. Shanley, who will pursue a master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology at UC in the fall, hopes to continue partnering with experts like McKenna and students like Schram to increase awareness on gender diversity at UC and beyond. 

“There’s so much backlash with the transgender community, especially right now with the topic of transgender athletes, so I just want to be a voice for them,” Shanley says. “They need allies, and as a white, cisgender female, I want to show my support for people to be authentically themselves.”