When Dr. Davis Smith, Medical Director of the Davison Health Center, held a student forum to launch the Center’s newly formed Transgender Clinic, he hardly thought the forum would be the clinic’s demise.
“The long and the short of it is that at the end of the [forum] we looked at each other and said, ‘We don’t need a Transgender Health Clinic. We just need a central health clinic that’s sufficiently inclusive of transgender people,’” he said.
Smith said that he started working on the initiative at the start of the last academic year after a student requested that Health Services work to become more attuned to the needs of transgender students. Along with Director of Student Health Services Joyce Walter, Smith reviewed medical literature and conducted Internet searches in order to develop a model for a tailored sexual health clinic. The two said they hoped to eventually offer a resource list for local counseling and endocrine services and a tailored sexual health screen that would be equivalent with the Men and Women’s Health Services. In addition, they said they want to offer endocrine and psychological health services for students at the Health Center for less money than otherwise available.
“I’ve always really been interested in sexual health because it’s always been a really good place to meet people,” Smith said. “It’s a much more here and now issue for students [than other things] like high blood pressure and cholesterol.”
When the clinic was launched at the beginning of this year, Smith decided to hold a student forum in order to publicize the clinic and to get student input and feedback. According to Smith, interested students, all of the class deans and Residential Life staff members attended. The result was the decision to overhaul Health Services entirely.
“I thought the idea was brilliant,” Smith said. “So what I wound up doing was canning the men’s health and women’s health things and just making a general wellness and sexual health clinic.”
According to Smith, since equipment for a sexual health visit for people of both sexes is included in each examining room, he felt that the visits did not need to be pre-directed in they way initially anticipated.
Smith drafted a new pre-visit and exam survey, both of which were reviewed with the patient during the exam. Among more traditional queries, questions on the pre-visit survey include a slot to write in one’s preferred pronoun, and a space to write in what specific health concerns, if any, the student has in order to assist Health Center staff in best addressing each individual student’s needs. In addition, the survey directly tackles gender identity history with a question that reads: “If you feel it would contribute to the quality of care we provide, please describe your gender identity history,” followed by “Would you like a copy of our transgender resource/ referral list?”
On the exam sheet, various forms of sexual intercourse, including vaginal, anal, oral and other are listed. Beside these categories, students can indicate whether they were the recipient or performer of these acts, and whether any measures were taken to prevent against STDs or pregnancy.
Currently, the Heath Center’s website lists the various services they provide along with descriptions of each, so that when making appointments, students can select the kind of visit they require.
Though he acknowledges that relations between the transgender community and the Health Center have been strained in the past, Smith said he thinks things are changing.
“[Due to these changes] the relationship has become, I’d like to think, a lot more mutually satisfying,” he said.
Members of this community said they agree.
“I’d put [the Health Center] as the administrative department on campus that’s doing the most to reach out to transgender students,” said Zack Strassburger ’06, a student who identifies as transgender and has been involved with the changes to the Center.
According to Smith, the changes have not just improved services available to transgender students. Since utilization of Health Services is typically 2/3 by women and 1/3 by men, physicians and nurses in the past have tended to try to address all health care aspects with men when they come in since they’re statistically less likely to come often. Many of these aspects, such as suggestions to wear a seatbelt, got lost for women. Smith said that he will try to change this.
“What I think is really neat about this is that now with this coordinated visit those questions are uniformally applied to people because of their age group,” Smith said.
Smith is also looking into issues such as the possibility of performing a rape kit on men. The procedure is traditionally used for female rape victims in order to collect evidence against the perpetrator. Middlesex Hospital offers the service for females, but not males. He stated that he feels it’s extremely important that the Health Center makes sure that student expectations are fulfilled, rather than disappointed. Smith is also continuing to try to improve the program, as well as expand the services they offer to transgender students.
Paige Kruza ’07, another student who identifies as transgender, looked forward to the continuing development of the Health Center.
“I think it’s an ongoing process but it’s great that they’ve been listening to student feedback,” Kruza said.
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