Hamilton Trans Health Coalition is a trans-led group of 182 people that includes trans, gender-diverse, and non-binary community members, family physicians, specialists and other health care providers, educators, policy-makers, advocates, and other members of our community. We work together to increase the capacity of Hamilton’s primary health care systems to deliver high-quality gender-affirming healthcare to trans, gender-diverse, and non-binary people (‘trans folk’) who live, learn, work, and play in Hamilton.
We use a collective impact model that pairs the knowledge and experience of members of historically marginalized communities with the systemic privileges of experts and decision-makers in primary and specialist health settings.
We provide service navigation to Hamiltonians (and, increasingly, surrounding communities), we support professional mentorship and communities of practice, we offer consultation and training to support employees and patients, and we are part of Hamilton’s 2SLGBTQAI+ social services backbone connecting equity-seeking groups and individuals to direct supports and community strength.
We provide education workshops with a local focus on a variety of trans-related issues for health care providers and we recommend the gender affirming training programs offered by Rainbow Health Ontario.
We are incorporated and registered as a charity. We are not a clinic and do not provide direct medical services.
We are committed to increasing capacity for, and access to, gender-affirming care for all trans, non-binary, and gender diverse people who wish to access it. We assert that gender-affirming care not only includes hormone therapies and surgery, but also (for example) sexual and reproductive health, general competent primary care, and access to the social facilitators of health.
We work to ensure that primary care spaces in Hamilton are safe for, and affirming of, trans communities and identities.
Read the full HTHC Position on Gender Affirming Care.
Our Work
Hamilton Trans Health Coalition:
- is responsive to requests from the community, to connect people in Hamilton and surrounding areas to services or supports when they are available and to catalogue gaps when the connection cannot be made,
- provides formal education opportunities that expand the capacity of health care systems in Hamilton and surrounding areas to serve trans, gender-diverse, and non-binary individuals,
- provides professional consultation and networking opportunities that expand the capacity of health care systems in Hamilton and surrounding areas to serve trans, gender-diverse, and non-binary individuals, and
- advocates for trans, gender-diverse, and non-binary individuals’ access to high quality, comprehensive, evidence-based, and patient-centred health care using the data and knowledge we have gathered through our work.
Hamilton and surrounding areas generally includes communities in Halton, Haldimand, Norfolk, and Brant in partnership with organizations serving those communities, and excludes London, Guelph, St. Catharines, and their respective surrounding areas.
History
The Hamilton Trans Health Coalition was established in 2016 to build Hamilton’s capacity to deliver good quality health care to trans and gender-diverse Hamiltonians, many of whom were traveling to neighbouring cities to access transitioning care, hormone therapy, and surgical referral. On August 31st, 2016 a founding group of concerned providers and advocates began the coalition to address these needs.
HTHC includes in its membership family physicians, nurses, pediatricians, endocrinologists, social workers, pharmacists, psychotherapists and other health care providers who work in or connect people to primary care. Practitioners work from their own practices and come together to share their learning, solve problems, and collaborate on education and capacity-building.