Associate Professor of Community Medicine, Dr. Aqsa Shaikh from Jamia Hamdard, is committed to healthcare equity — she’s working to eradicate hunger, reducing vaccine hesitancy by traversing language inaccessibility, and most recently, leading a trans-inclusive healthcare project in India.

Almost one-quarter of transgender people aged 25 to 64, avoid healthcare due to anticipated discrimination, according to a study on the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey Report.

These findings are reflected in the Indian medical education system, which either lacks conversations on trans-affirming healthcare, or stigmatizes the trans community, leaving doctors hesitant or awkward, if not outright discriminatory, towards their trans patients.

“The system currently is such that, even if there are well-meaning folks out there, the system is going to discriminate against you,” Dr. Shaikh said.

But project TransCare:MedEd is trying to change that through a series of collaborative workshops with medical educators, students, healthcare providers, and transgender community members, to create trans-affirmative competencies, or skills, that medical graduate would be required to gain.

The project, funded by the University of Chicago, will be led by Dr. Shaikh in collaboration with disability leader Dr. Satendra Singh, and experts from public health research NGO Sangath in Delhi, Bhopal and Manipal.

It will also build and extend on findings from an ongoing TransCare:COVID19 project, which documents the experiences of transgender people in healthcare settings during the pandemic.

As an out trans woman who’s part of the medical community, Dr. Shaikh says she hasn’t faced as much discrimination as other trans folks might. But still, the systemic ignorance had a negative impact on her health when she was admitted to her own hospital to be treated for COVID-19.

“I had a chest x-ray done that chest x-ray had shadows of my breast implants, which were mistaken as pneumonia in my case, and then I was started on two different antibiotics, which were unnecessary and naturally, you know, came with their own side effects,” Dr. Shaikh said.

This risk of exposing patients to unnecessary treatments could be significantly reduced if non-invasive questions about hormone replacement therapy and gender-affirming care were part of checking someone’s medical history.