Please Support Your Local Transgender Clinic

The Hampton Roads and Richmond areas of Virginia are very fortunate to have Transgender health care clinics. The Transitioning Your Life Clinic in Norfolk and the Fan Free Clinic in Richmond have become the health care life source for many Transgender Virginians who cannot afford health care because they are non-insured, under insured or lack any funds for health care. Much like Lyon-Martin in San Francisco and Callen-Lorde in New York City, the two Virginia clinics provide free health care to the Transgender community including hormone replacement therapy with informed consent by the client. Hampton Roads' Transitioning Your Life Clinic - TLC is unlike the others mentioned in that it is a service provided to the Transgender community by an AIDS Service Organization - ASO. ACCESS AIDS Care ensures TLC is funded and remains operational even in these difficult financial times. ACCESS AIDS Care has a long and proven record of financial integrity thanks to a pro active Board of Directors and staff. This writer has great hopes that the Lyon-Martin clinic will be able to collect enough money (for links to donate, please see article) to keep their doors open. At the same time, I would hope they are implementing ways to make this wonderful facility financially stable. Our Trans brothers and sisters in the Bay Area cannot afford to lose this vital resource. In fact, there is a tremendous need for many more Transgender focused health clinics throughout the United States.  Transgender community faces potential loss of clinic Last month on Crosscurrents, we reported on the discrimination transgender people face in the healthcare system. Nearly 6,500 transgender and gender non-conforming people responded to a study conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the results were alarming. DR. JAIME GRANT: The accumulation of the daily indignities, harassment, and even violence that the people in our study were experiencing, were adding up to extremely bad health outcomes. That's Dr. Jaime Grant, one of the study's authors. She found that, if you're transgender, you face social and economic marginalization: you're more likely to be homeless, get HIV, end up smoking, using drugs and alcohol, and you're more likely to attempt suicide. Dr. Grant says there aren't many places in the United States where transgender people can feel safe and comfortable receiving healthcare. But one of them is in San Francisco. And today we're going to drop in. We've got a tour guide for this journey: ASHER MOODY-DAVIS: Oh boy, my name is Asher Moody-Davis. His name used to be just ... Moody. MOODY-DAVIS: I just recently married, became a Moody-Davis. And I am 30 years old... He's very busy... MOODY-DAVIS: I am a graduate student in computer science at San Francisco State University. ...among other things: MOODY-DAVIS: ...husband, brother, good friend ... ...and tour guide. Let's go with Asher now to San Francisco's Market Street, near Octavia, to a small storefront that makes a big difference for many marginalized San Franciscans. MOODY-DAVIS: You're on Market Street and it's this busy, kind of business-y area in general, and you see this little door, and you're like, "Okay, I guess I'm going through this little door." And then there's this flight of stairs that takes you up to like the main landing. You look to the left and there's just this little door that you would think would just go to an office, and I walk through the door and I see a little waiting room... We're inside Lyon-Martin Health Services. A bright pink piece of paper hangs from the receptionist's desk. It's got a stethoscope in the shape of a heart and reads: "Hotties 4 Homo Healthcare: an emergency fundraiser for Lyon-Martin Health Services." Lyon-Martin is in an emergency. And that means its 2,500 patients - most of whom are lesbian, low-income and uninsured - are in an emergency, too. The clinic was supposed to close at the end of January - for good. DAWN HARBATKIN: The Board passed a resolution to close the clinic. That's Dawn Harbatkin. HARBATKIN: ...Dawn Harbatkin. I am the interim executive director and medical director at Lyon-Martin Health Services. And after threatening to shut the clinic down, Lyon-Martin's Board of Directors gave Harbatkin and her staff one month to turn its finances around. Now everyone is working against the clock. HARBATKIN: We still may need to close if we don't raise the amount of money, but we're going to do it in a way that is safe and smooth for our patients. And Lyon-Martin has to raise $250,000 just to stay open for another month. The Board's resolution came down in January, and without a dramatic fundraising campaign, Lyon-Martin would already be closed. But it's not. We'll have more on that story, shortly, but first, let's get to know one of its clients a little better. We already met him. MOODY-DAVIS: Oh, boy, my name is Asher Moody-Davis. Our tour guide. Here we go. * * * ASHER MOODY-DAVIS: As soon as I knew what gender was, I was not fitting into the gender I was assigned at birth. So pretty much from the time that I was going out and interacting with people in the world, they would always think that I was a boy, but I was a girl. I was born female, and so my mother would always go through this explanation of, "Oh no, this is not my son, this is my daughter." So that was always pretty painful and awkward, especially as a child not understanding why I was always, you know, different. That was just the only way I knew how to be. The struggle of feeling out of place in my own body, that's something I had to deal with every single day, and that I still to some degree deal with it. I remember back in middle school, all the girls were jealous because I was developing, and I was, you know, I was given ... I don't know, um, more assets than others or whatever, or I had a more ample bust than a lot of the other girls in uh, in the junior higher locker room, ya know. So that's great for a lot of women, but not for me, personally. I never really saw a future for myself. I could see maybe like five years in advance, but I had no idea what I was going to end up like. And I couldn't - this is one of the major things I noticed - I couldn't picture myself growing up as a woman. So, there's like this blank slate. And all of a sudden when I started thinking about transitioning and being a man, things started to fill in. And there were more possibilities. Okay, it's actually kind of silly, but I've kept every single empty vial of testosterone since I started. I have no idea why I keep them. I just started doing it, and I don't know why ... Yeah, so it's, so here's the, this is like a normal prescription bottle, and then inside is the vial. So I have, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten ... ten used vials of testosterone, each one gives me ten shots, and I do a shot every two weeks. So the very first one, I think they're in alphabetical order, I mean chronological order, cause I'm silly like that. So yeah, the first one was prescribed, "June of 2007." I had started thinking about, well originally I had started thinking of transitioning in 2000. At the time, you know, I was a lesbian and I felt very identified with the lesbian community, and I felt like I'd be a traitor if I did something like that. So, I didn't do anything for a while, and then like maybe three or four years later, this idea started coming back again, and it was getting really strong. It was something that I couldn't ignore anymore. The guidelines are that you're supposed to go to therapy for a year. And I went to therapy for two years because I had personally have struggled with depression for most of my life. So, I had to make sure that I dealt with that and I had to decide that I was okay with being alone. And that's really scary. And so, I'm looking at this bottle, and I'm going to be taking this for the rest of my life, is this something that I'm prepared to do? And so I just sat there and thought about it for a while and I went over all my reasons again and why I was doing what I was doing. And I actually saw what my life could be like, so I decided to go back to school. And as soon as I started going to school and taking ownership of what was happening in my life and making sacrifices to better myself, I realized that it was worth it to make myself happy, even if it hurt people I knew, and they weren't willing to be around after it. Nobody knows what's going to happen in the future. I don't know if ten years from now, I want to be on testosterone, but I know that I do right now. And so this is what I'm doing. * * * Lyon-Martin Health Services, a community clinic that serves lesbian and transgender people, was set to close in January of this year. The clinic was having trouble making ends meet - the down economy has meant less money from the state and federal government. It's meant less money from donors. And it's meant less money from patients struggling through their own economic crises. The clinic isn't free, but they'll take you even if you can't pay. Now, Lyon-Martin isn't exactly a blameless victim of economic circumstance - the clinic has had problems with its billing; in fact, it's failed to properly bill MediCal for a couple of years. So many people are questioning the clinic's Board of Directors for their lack of oversight. These are things the clinic's trying to fix. But despite Lyon-Martin's internal problems, a lot of people think the clinic's worth saving. KALW's Erica Mu has the story. * * * MORGAN WEINERT (voicemail): Hi Erica, this is Morgan from Lyon-Martin Health Services. It's Monday, February 7th and I wanted to call and update you and let you know that we're at $245,909. ERICA MU: It's been about two weeks since the clinic's closure was announced. ASHER MOODY-DAVIS: I couldn't believe it, to be perfectly honest. Lyon-Martin has been Asher Moody-Davis' health clinic for the last ten months. MOODY-DAVIS: I couldn't understand how something so amazing and so unique that helps so many people that would otherwise go untreated or be mistreated could suffer in this way, that they could just close their doors. It didn't even occur to me that could happen. Because I mean, this is the place, this is where, Lyon Martin is the place where trans people, people that can't afford care, um, women coming from all different situations, can go and receive quality care. How could this place close its doors? Moody-Davis is part of the 20% of Lyon-Martin's patients who are transgender. Unlike most clinics, Lyon-Martin offers services specifically geared for transgender people, like trans-affirmative gynecologic care and guidance on transitional hormone therapy. But Joanne Keatley, who directs the UCSF Center of Excellence for Transgender Health, says it's actually the more routine stuff that makes Lyon-Martin special. JOANNE KEATLEY: Most healthcare for transgender people is fairly routine medical care that um that uh your average primary care physician would be able to deliver if they had access to information. But, she says they don't - there's no training for treating transgender people in current medical school curricula. Furthermore, many insurance policies excludeany benefits related to gender reassignment surgery. Keatley says the reasons for the exclusion have changed over the years, from the surgeries being "cosmetic" to "too expensive." KEATLEY: We have found that actually providing good healthcare for transgender people is not really that much more expensive than any other healthcare access issue. Um, for example, it's much less expensive and even less complicated I've heard than providing good diabetes care. But at Lyon-Martin, you don't have to have insurance. You don't have to educate your doctor. You don't even have to have money, which is a good thing, considering that the unemployment rate for transgender people is twice that of the general population - make that four times if you're a transgender person of color. You just have to walk in, like Asher Moody-Davis did last summer. MOODY-DAVIS: You know, it's great to walk into a place and feel like it's, it's being run by people in your community. Or you know, really strong allies. Cause that's something that I don't feel like I've felt anywhere else. WEINERT (voicemail): Hello, it's Morgan calling from Lyon-Martin Health Services, giving you an update. As of February 23rd, we have raised $307,414 in donations and pledges. DAWN HARBATKIN: Every morning when I come in, I find Morgan or Kara, and I say, "How much, how much?" Again, Lyon-Martin Medical Director Dawn Harbatkin. HARBATKIN: And then every night before I go home, I'm like, "How much, how much?" It's been about a month since Lyon-Martin was set to close, and the clinic's raised enough to make payroll for the month, but not enough to pay off the clinic's entire debt. HARBATKIN: We have received pledges and donations through Paypal. We have received checks. We have received in solidarity gifts... ...like pizza, chocolates and an Edible Arrangement. Not cash, but nice. The point is, once the word got out, the community responded. January 30th fundraiser at the El Rio: $38,000. February 13th Queer Food for Love reception: $4,500. February 27th Oscar Party at Trigger: $2,400. Not to mention the anonymous $50,000 donation through the clinic's maxed-out Paypal account. HARBATKIN: I think the community has said loudly and clearly that this is their clinic. But emergency fundraising isn't going to reverse the clinic's growing number of patients.It's not going to stop state and federal funding cuts. And it's not going to fix the clinic's billing problems. HARBATKIN: I think the scariest part of this for me is that we don't know which way it's going to go, that we're telling patients that we might close, but we might not. Lyon-Martin's back on the clock - the clinic has to raise $500,000, or it will be closed for good, for real. The clinic has asked the city for $150,000 to pay off immediate debts. It's putting together a recovery plan. And the community - well it's asking the Board to match the $300,000 that have already been raised. WEINERT (voicemail): Hello, it's Morgan calling from Lyon-Martin Health Services, giving you an update... With bridge financing from the city and the community, along with a more sound financial plan, the people at Lyon-Martin hope that they can survive the current economic crisis. And those calls won't be necessary, anymore. In San Francisco, I'm Erica Mu for Crosscurrents. Want to know more about transgender health and equality issues?The National Transgender Health Summit is next month in San Francisco, on April 8 and 9. To make donations to Lyon-Martin Health Services, visit their website here. Health, Science and Environment This article originally appeared on KALWNews.org Posted By: KALW News (Email) | March 23 2011 at 06:09 PM Original article