Misinformation continues to harm LGBTQ people

In an Editor's Statement on the importance of access to gender affirming care for our nation's youth, Transgender Health Editor-in-Chief Robert Garofalo, MD, MPH states, "LGBTQ youth need love, support, and acceptance, not misinformation and hate thinly veiled as compassion."

"Although recent attempts to distort science and disseminate misinformation—to dehumanize the most vulnerable members of our community, and as a result deny transgender youth access to health care—are not new, these strategies are now highly organized, pervasive, and well-funded," says Dr. Garofalo, Professor Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

"Gender-affirming care is grounded in a broadly held belief that access to health care is a basic human right, and health care decisions should be made by shared decision-making following thoughtful, fully informed, and collaborative discussions between adolescents, parents and guardians, and health care providers, not decided upon or regulated by the state, and certainly not prohibited or only available based upon state of residence," states Dr. Garofalo.

"Amidst an alarming rise in legislative action to limit or curtail the rights of LGBTQ Americans, and specifically in response to more than a dozen states that have enacted bans to health care for gender diverse and transgender young people, it was time to speak out and release a statement as Editor-in-Chief of Transgender Health," says Dr. Garofalo.