January 4, 2012

"Monthly Notes" from WPATH President Lin Fraser

Dear WPATH Members;

On behalf of the WPATH office and leadership, I wish you and your loved ones a happy and healthy 2012.

This note is the first of what we hope to be monthly notes to the membership to keep you informed of WPATH activities, progress made, visions and goals, and any other items that may be of interest to the membership. I will either be writing to you personally or will ask another member of our Communications and Technology (C&T) Committee (Jamison Green PhD, Gail Knudson MD, or Vin Tangpricha MD, PhD) to do so.

First of all, I want to say how honored I am to be your President until February 2014 when we travel to Bangkok, Thailand for our 23rd Symposium. This is a great organization, 658 members strong, all of whom, I believe I can safely say, are doing meaningful work to fulfill our vision: " to bring together diverse professionals dedicated to developing best practices and supportive policies worldwide that promote health, research, education, respect, dignity, and equality for transgender, transsexual, and gender-variant people in all cultural settings".

I am also honored to follow in the footsteps of Walter Bockting PhD who set us on such a wise course when he set his goals at the Oslo Symposium. For those who don't know, a brief summary of his talk included the following goals: 1. Improve communication, 2. Increase transparency, 3. Broaden the focus of transgender health, 4.Enhance outreach and collaboration, 5.Take more advantage of technology, and 6. Be more truly an international association. As you probably do know, WPATH had a wonderful and productive term under his leadership. My vision is to continue with these goals, with an emphasis on international expansion, collaboration and education/training in person and via technology. To achieve these goals, we need funding so I hope to initiate a Development Committee. I would also like us to broaden the focus of transgender health by developing a Committee on Spiritual Health. I hope to be able to tell you more once the Board has had its annual meeting in April, in Ghent, Belgium, hosted by Board Member Griet DeCuypere MD, PhD, and has outlined a new Strategic Plan as part of the work at the meeting.

Speaking of the Board, I'd like to introduce them. We have a great team comprised of people with many talents. All are smart and bring varying perspectives to our discussions. Jamison Green PhD is President-Elect, Gail Knudson MD is Secretary-Treasurer, and of course Walter Bockting PhD is Past-President. Other members of the Board are Becky Allison MD, Marsha Botzer MA, George Brown, MD, Griet DeCuypere MD, PhD, Randi Ettner, PhD, Sam Winter PhD, and Kevan Wylie MB MD. Rounding out the team are Executive Director Bean Robinson PhD, Association Manager Jeff Whitman B.S. and Executive Administrator Andrea Martin. You may not know that the Board and Officers of WPATH receive no compensation or expense reimbursement. All are dedicated volunteers who spend countless hours in service to WPATH.

Regarding our recent activities, as you probably know, our Atlanta conference was our most successful ever! For those who weren't there, Arlene (Ari) Lev LCSW-R and Sandra Samons PhD, captured its essence, I believe. Here is a comment from the listserv:

Dear Walter, Vin, Jason, Jeff, Lin, Bean, Andrea and everyone else involved in planning this year's WPATH conference. I am borrowing Ari's words because they say exactly what I want to say. It was truly a marvelous event, on so many levels: educationally, socially, and organizationally. I too am a veteran conference attendee, and this was by far the best conference I've ever attended. It was wonderful to see old friends, meet new ones, learn from others with like interests, interact and share ideas. It left me with a renewed commitment to make every possible effort to attend our next symposium in Thailand! Warmly to all my colleagues, Sandy Samons

Since the conference, we have been partnering with CoE (Center of Excellence for Transgender Health), OSF (Open Society Foundation) and PAHO (Pan American Health Organization) to develop international guidelines for transgender care. Most recently, Walter Bockting PhD & JoAnne Keatley MSW wrote the draft document, Blueprint for the Provision of Comprehensive Care to Transgender and Transsexual Persons and their Communities in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Providers (including WPATH members JoAnne Keatley MSW, Drs Alex Gonzalez, Maddie Deutsch, Anita Radix, Eli Coleman, Gail Knudson, Walter Bockting and me) and transactivists from Latin America and the Caribbean met last month in Washington DC, and discussed, debated and added ideas and content to the initial draft. WPATH was asked to present a slideshow showing how our day-to-day activities might dovetail with their needs. This was a wonderful opportunity for us, as we are not known very well in Latin America and the Caribbean. As a technology test (am not sure this will function on the university servers), here is a link to the talk:

We have good news about the Standards of Care. The press has almost all been positive. If you haven't seen the new SOC, they are up on our site. Kit Rachlin PhD and her team have been very busy distributing the Standards far and wide. Chair Eli Coleman PhD has put together a slideshow about the SOC7 and several of us are already using it in our WPATH presentations. He has also had them translated into Spanish, which we used in our PAHO presentation and will use again at our upcoming January trip to Cuba. We have also put together an initial team for fundraising and prioritizing translation, in partnership with GIRES who, as you may remember, honored us with a 20K gift for SOC7 translation into other languages.

Our ICD Consensus Process Team met the Dec 31 deadline set by the WHO. Under the able leadership of Gail Knudson MD & Griet De Cuypere MDPhD, the WPATH team, incorporating ideas from the membership and international advisory, put together proposals to either delete or modify the current Dx in the ICD. We have already received complimentary feedback from the WHO about our process. This was an especially hard-working team who deliberated constructively in what could have been a contentious process. Kudos are surely warranted to them and to Griet and to Gail.

And finally, I am hoping to hear from the membership. There are so many of you I don't know, but am hoping our paths will cross sometime over the next few years, and certainly in Bangkok! WPATH is expanding almost exponentially which means we can do so much more given such a large, enthusiastic and talented membership.

I would love to hear your hopes and ideas for the future of WPATH. The Board will be creating a new Strategic Plan in April and we want to hear from you. Please send feedback. I have a new WPATH email address: solely for communicating with you. I hope to hear from you soon.

My very best,

Lin Fraser EdD
WPATH President