We need to protect everyone

As our populations grow larger, it is important to make sure we are actively aware of everyone’s similarities and differences. My first hope for our community is to stop judging individuals based on their appearance, body choices, and all factors of an individual that help them feel empowered. Kindness and respect are the first steps to making everyone feel comfortable and safe in their community. However, it is still important to recognize this change will not happen overnight and there are challenges that Transgender individuals face every single day.

Health care is a huge issue for transgender folks to not only find but also to actually be taken care of properly. We already have known disparities within our health care system and this is just another way that the health care system is failing people. Transgender folks are already at a higher risk for mental and physical health-related issues.

In an article, written by Cara Murez, she did a survey with doctors around the U.S. that treat transgender patients. The survey revealed that these doctors are feeling lots of pressure in their services because of the push to limit patient care. Not only are they alarmed by the pressures of this, but they are also worried about their own well-being, patient safety, and the possibility of legal action being taken against them. The article also mentioned that all major medical organizations consider gender-affirming health care to be standard care, and with that, they have found this care has lowered the risk of suicide and improved mental health among young transgender individuals.

In my own opinion, I believe that having gender-affirming health care should be standard at every medical practice building across America. However, I know that this is not the case and can be a reason for transgender people to not feel safe in the hands of healthcare providers which can lead to more mental health issues and possibly increase the risk for suicide. If someone goes to school to join the health care field, then they should be practiced in taking care of all members of our society and not exclude a specific group or individuals from receiving the same and equal care.

Another post that I read was published by Cap 20, which included important rates that show the disparities between transgender individuals and cisgender individuals. The first statistic that stood out to me was that fifty-four percent of transgender individuals reported poor physical health at least one day in the previous month. The important part to realize was that this was eighteen percentage points higher than cisgender individuals. Another statistic that was alarming when they broke down the mental health section is that three out of five transgender folks faced at least one day in the previous month with poor mental health. This statistic was twenty-three percentage points higher than cisgender folks.

There are many more important statistics broken down in that article that can be eye-opening to the disparities that transgender individuals face all around. I think this article is an important read because it puts into perspective in an understandable way, the differences between transgender individuals and cisgender individuals. These are the types of articles that focus on educating all people about the issues within our systems that contribute to putting down certain groups within our society.

I chose this topic for my blog post today because I personally feel like we need more education on the Transgender community and this can help to provide certain insights that can be extremely important. Our health care system has a lot of flaws, some are by choice and some are due to pressures of laws and bans that are being pushed. This helped me to open my perspective on what inequalities certain individuals face in our society and how real the effects can be for them.