Know Your Rights: Gender-Affirming Health Services

Thu, Mar 4 2021
11:00 am – 12:30 pm
Virtual

Events for Youth and Family health and wellness Inclusive Services Justice Initiatives LGBTQ


Justice Initiatives at BPL is partnering with community organizations and agencies to produce a series of Know Your Rights workshops. This event in the series will focus on:

  • The right to medical services, including hormones and surgeries, for adults and youth of all ages;
  • How to seek gender-affirming care, without insurance;
  • Understanding what insurance covers and doesn't, and dealing with insurance discrimination;
  • Getting involved in the fight to reduce barriers to transgender and gender-nonconforming folks obtaining medical and health services.

The event will be livestreamed on BPL's YouTube channel and on this event page. A Q&A session will be available via the livestream chat. Please register to receive information about Justice Initiatives programming.

Partners:  Callen-Lorde is the global leader in LGBTQ healthcare. Since the days of Stonewall, they have been transforming lives in LGBTQ communities through excellent comprehensive care, provided free of judgment and regardless of ability to pay. In addition, they are continuously pioneering research, advocacy and education to drive positive change around the world, because they believe healthcare is a human right.

Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund is committed to ending discrimination based upon gender identity and expression and to achieving equality for transgender people through public education, test-case litigation, direct legal services, and public policy efforts. Find TLDEF on Facebook and Twitter.

NYU Langone Health is one of the nation’s premier academic medical centers. Their mission to serve, teach, and discover is achieved through an integrated academic culture devoted to excellence in patient care, education, and research.

Vibianno “Vib” Gonzalez  (he / they, el / ellos) is a chicanx community activist, cultural humility trainer, and Transgender Non-Binary Integrated Health Navigator / Surgery Doula at Callen-Lorde Community Health Clinic. As a Surgery Doula, they create space to collectively foster equitable environments that may facilitate safe experiences for our communities. Vib is dedicated to creating inclusive, healing, and empowering spaces for the communities that have entrusted their health care to us, and has especially advocated for such care in schools, medical facilities, and community spaces.

Noah E. Lewis, Esq. (they / theirs) is director of the Trans Health Project at Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, where he was previously a staff attorney for six years. Noah’s work focuses on eliminating barriers to insurance coverage for trans-related health care. Some of his active cases include challenging a transgender exclusion in the North Carolina state employee health plan and the repeal of nondiscrimination regulations under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. In 2005, Noah was the first openly transgender student to graduate from Harvard Law School, where he worked to eliminate trans health exclusions in student and staff health plans. 

Jeremy A. Wernick, LCSW (he / him / his) is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the Child Study Center of Hassenfeld Children's Hospital at NYU Langone. Mr. Wernick is the Co-Director of the Adolescent Dialectical Behavior Therapy program and part of the Transgender Youth Health Program team at NYU Langone. Mr. Wernick's clinical practice focuses on providing evidence-based care to children, adolescents, and young adults with gender dysphoria and co-occurring mood and anxiety disorders, specializing in reducing in life-threatening or risky behaviors. Mr. Wernick is a member of the World Professional Associated for Transgender Health (WPATH) and the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT).