UCLA Medical Symposium Demands Doctors Accommodate People Who Aren’t Men or Women – Opinion

There are many problems with healthcare. Allegedly one: It isn’t adequately inclusive of patients who don’t identify as guys or gals.

That’s a curious conclusion, as healthcare is medical rather than social. However, Friday’s University of California Los Angeles meeting made it clear that more accommodation is needed.

The UCLA Children’s Discovery and Innovation Institute Symposium was co-hosted by transgender organizer Sid P. Jordan.

From Sid’s UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs page:

Sid Jordan is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Social Welfare. He/they also works as a graduate student researcher at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. His research examines the epistemic as well as political attacks on transgender life and ideas. It also explores collective organizing, survival strategies, health care, healing, safety and security for transgender people. His work also examines changes in politics and the administration of public safety programmes, with an emphasis on mitigating harms from state intervention to LGBTQ survivors of domestic or sexual violence.

The Daily Bruin reports on the conference’s purpose:

[Sid explained that]His goal was to promote collaboration among researchers from fields like biological sciences or gender studies.

Jordan said he wanted this event to help scientists at UCLA and across the country face the scientific field’s history of conducting studies that have harmed transgender and nonbinary communities. Speaking from his experience as a transgender person who does research on transgender health, he added that has seen researchers conduct studies on transgender people without consulting transgender community organizations, which can help cause these harms because of a lack of researchers’ lived experience.

Sid’s in luck; there’s a lot going on in the way of transformative care:

‘Good Morning America’ Issues a COVID PSA About ‘Pregnant People’

Breastfeeding Academy Bails on ‘Breasts’

‘The Practising Midwife’ Magazine Releases Transgender Issue Featuring Bearded Birthing Parent

University Renames Its Women’s Clinic Because ‘Women’ Was Medically Inaccurate

Hospitals Are Starting to Ask Men if They’re Pregnant

University Schools Midwifery Students: Handling the Birthing Penis

As for “lived experience,” can healthcare providers be expected to have walked socially in their patients’ shoes?

Either way, symposium participant Steven Mittelman — UCLA Health pediatric endocrinology division chief and father of a nonbinary child — wants understanding. “You think you know what you’re talking about until it affects you…and your family personally,” he said, “and so watching them struggle and learning myself what it all means was a really important, impactful journey for me, and I wanted to share some of that with the institution at large.”

Steven sounds like he hopes counselors will become doctors.

Referring to:

Deboleena Roy was the Emory College of Arts and Sciences senior associate Dean.

Sex, if you weren’t aware, isn’t immutable:

The scholars claim that the core ideas of sex can be modified, just as language and culture affect biology. Biology also affects how we understand and express sex and gender.

Social and political issues are infecting every aspect of life — from faith, to education, to science. We’re in the midst of a Great Merging. Everything is becoming one with all things.

Sid worries about the consequences of doing medical research in a way that isn’t right for him.

Jordan stated that scientists need to be aware of the extensive effects of scientific research on anti-trans policies.

Going forward, I’m sure they will be.

-ALEX

 

You can find more of my content here:

Media Agency refuses to accredit university unless it teaches future journalists more about social justice

NPR Agrees to the Law.

Every Graduate Passes a DEI Course at University, Students Forced To Take It

Check out all of my RedState work Click here.

Thanks for reading. You are invited to leave comments in the Comment section.

About Post Author

Follow Us