Shane Garrettson is a final-year PharmD candidate at the High Point University Fred Wilson School of Pharmacy and a member of the 2022 APhA–ASP New Business Review Committee.
In February 2022, Texas state legislature published statements equating gender-affirming therapy (GAT) to child abuse. This wasn’t an isolated incident, but in fact a single chapter of a series of functionally interchangeable manifestations of uninformed hostility springing forth across the country. The legislative movements in Texas, Florida, Arizona, Idaho, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, and other states are motivated by intolerance and seek only to alienate those who are different from the ones enacting the policies. The policies target an already marginalized population, eliminating options for treatment and threatening them with worsening outcomes.
In the face of this, APhA–ASP members were challenged with a unique opportunity. APhA’s 2022 Annual Meeting & Exposition was to be hosted in San Antonio, TX, the state which created the most distressing headlines on this topic. It was clear to students and faculty of High Point University that action must be taken. The extraordinary hatred on display warranted a response of equal or greater measure. The team at High Point University quickly agreed that the best way to proceed was to develop a statement supporting the inclusion of GAT in pharmacy curriculum as well as buttressing the affirmation of gender expression with a backbone of evidence-based guidelines such as those provided by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health or the University of California San Francisco.
Passionate debate at APhA2022
The High Point University team started in their own state of North Carolina, communicating through the state association with other chapters. After that, the students extended the pursuit using what little time there was before APhA2022 to reach out to other state chapters. After 2 weeks of frenzied emailing and zoom calls, 8 institutions from 5 different states—Texas, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Florida—agreed enthusiastically to support the statement to be submitted as a policy in the APhA–ASP House of Delegates. While at the meeting, New Business Item 2022.1 (Gender Expansive Rights, Education, and Advocacy) was debated and then adopted after amendment following an outpouring of wonderfully impassioned support from the gathering of student pharmacist advocates from all over the country.
Championing the rights of patients
As frontline health care workers, it’s incumbent upon pharmacists to be paragons of not only equality, but equity of health care. Transgender, gender-expansive, and nonbinary patients face a massive disparity of outcomes, many of which are improved with GAT, which the Texas (and now other) legislatures are attempting to exterminate. With the expansion of pharmacist’s roles in health care, many cases of GAT are often overseen or monitored by pharmacists. The world is changing, and the landscape of health care is changing with it.
Despite our efforts, the hostility persists in Texas and elsewhere. Undeterred, pharmacists and student pharmacists will endure and continue to champion the rights of patients.
Take ownership of this responsibility. Finding the Courage to Change can be as simple as looking to your peers, your colleagues, and your friends. You never have to be courageous alone.