Join Julian Dormitzer, NP, Christine Caulfield, a long-time volunteer with Maine Transgender Network, Margo Rubero, gender-nonconformist and advocate for gender-affirming healthcare, and Candice McElroy, MD to learn more about this often misunderstood topic.

Gender-affirming care, as defined by the World Health Organization, encompasses a range of social, psychological, behavioral, and medical interventions “designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity” when it conflicts with the gender they were assigned at birth. The interventions help transgender people align various aspects of their lives — emotional, interpersonal, and biological — with their gender identity. As noted by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), that identity can run anywhere along a continuum that includes man, woman, a combination of those, neither of those, and fluid.

The interventions fall along a continuum as well, from counseling to changes in social expression to medications (such as hormone therapy).

“The goal is not treatment, but to listen to the individual and build understanding — to create an environment of safety in which emotions, questions, and concerns can be explored,” says Rafferty, lead author of a policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on gender-affirming care.