Despite efforts for universal health access, transgender and gender non-binary people in India often face unequal barriers in accessing healthcare. This inequity is rooted in the inadequacy of health professional education in India, which largely operates through a gender binary within a curriculum that pathologises LGBTQI+ folks.

In recent years, there’s been a growing push to make medical education trans-affirmative in the backdrop of Madras and Kerala High Court judgements, and the directive from the National Medical Commission.

But transforming India’s healthcare system comes with the need for a roadmap towards achieving this goal, especially in accordance with the new competency-based medical education curriculum.

The need to fill in this gap gave way to iHEAR TransCare Med: TransCare MedEd addresses the lack of trans-affirmative content that needs to be a part of the MBBS curriculum.

Here collaborators like Sangath, University of Chicago, Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence and Kasturba Medical College came together to create competencies on trans-affirmative health provision.

Through a systematic, participatory, and inclusive effort, TransCare MedEd has developed a set of draft trans-affirmative competencies on trans-affirmative healthcare in India. For this, a series of consultative stakeholder workshops were conducted in Delhi, Manipal and Bhopal.

The upcoming TransCare MedEd National conference on May 5th and 6th is aimed at disseminating and discussing the draft competencies, highlighting best practices and building consensus on the way forward.

Watch this space for narratives by transgender people navigating healthcare settings, and for thoughts and pathways on the way towards creating access to trans-affirmative healthcare.