Assistant Deputy Minister Steini Brown met with the SRS and Trans Health Policy Group on May 31st and indicated that the Ministry of Health is working on some positive initiatives to improve access to health care services for trans people. The Group includes managers from Sherbourne Health Centre and CAMH and leaders and clinicians from the trans community. This group has worked for over 18 months to provide consultation and to propose improvements in access to health care and equity for trans people.

We are pleased that the Ministry intends to add more assessors (3) for SRS, and to increase training for primary health care providers and teams to enable them to provide a broader range of culturally competent care (including hormones). We will keep you posted as more detailed plans are developed.

There is still quite a lot of work to do in preparing for these initiatives and they will take months to be in place. The SRS and Trans Health Policy Group encourages trans people not to change providers or to abandon their current plans to access services at this time.

Anna Travers, Director, Rainbow Health Ontario on behalf of the SRS and Trans Health Policy Group