University of Rochester Medical Center pediatric gender clinic offers East Irondequoit Central School employees continuing education credit for training on gender-affirming care

FOIA documents obtained from East Irondequoit Central School District in New York State reveal that the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Transgender Health ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) program invited East Irondequoit Central School employees to a session on “Motivational Interviewing Techniques & Gender-Affirming Care” which offered continuing education credit on May 10, 2023.

Other scheduled sessions by the clinic:

• May 24: Informed Consent for Gender Affirming Medical Care
• June 14: Testosterone
• June 28: Androgen Blockers and Estrogen

The URMC Transgender Health Echo is led by Dr. Jamie Mehringer, whose research focuses on “the impact of chest dysphoria and masculinizing reconstructive chest surgery in transmasculine youth”; he was the lead author on a 2021 paper published in 2021 in Pediatrics, “Experience of Chest Dysphoria and Masculinizing Chest Surgery in Transmasculine Youth,” which recruited 13-21 year olds from a pediatric hospital-based gender clinic to “explor[e] the experience of chest dysphoria and thoughts about or experiences with [masculinizing chest surgery].” The study, which was conducted on 30 patients, “were a mean age of 17.5 years, and 47% had undergone [masculinizing chest surgery]” and concluded that “[masculinizing chest surgery] performed during adolescence, including before age 18, (emphasis added) can alleviate suffering and improve functioning.”