Public meeting on gender-affirming care rescheduled for Oct. 28 in Orlando

A public meeting on the efficacy of transgender care that was canceled last month after Hurricane Ian ravaged Southwest Florida has been rescheduled for Oct. 28 in Orlando.

Members of the Florida Board of Medicine and Board of Osteopathic Medicine Joint Rules/Legislative Committee will hold a five-hour meeting at the Hyatt Regency Orlando International Airport.

The Florida National Organization for Women is helping organize supporters of gender-affirming care to encourage them to testify at the meeting and attend a rally.

According to the meeting notice, members of the Joint Committee will hear from seven presenters: Michael Biggs, Ph.D.; James Cantor, Ph.D.; Kristin Dayton, M.D.; Aron Janssen, M.D.; Riittakerttu Kaltiala, M.D.; Michael Laidlaw, M.D; and Meredithe McNamara, M.D.

Four of the presenters oppose gender-affirming care for teenagers, while three support providing the care to those who suffer from gender dysphoria.

Biggs has allegedly posted transphobic tweets in the past. Cantor, a Toronto-based clinical psychologist and neuroscientist, recently testified on behalf of an Alabama law that makes it a felony for anybody to engage in or cause a minor to receive gender affirming care.

In 2018, Kaltiala was one of four researchers who found that “virtually nothing is known regarding adolescent-onset gender dysphoria, its progression and factors that influence the completion of the developmental tasks of adolescence.” Laidlaw, a California endocrinologist, testified on behalf of the state in federal court last week, telling a federal judge it’s never appropriate to provide gender-affirming care because the risks outweigh the benefits.

The panel also includes proponents of gender-affirming care. McNamara, an assistant professor of pediatrics who specializes in adolescent medicine at Yale University’s School of Medicine, released a report earlier this year debunking arguments against gender-affirming care. Dayton is the co-director of the University of Florida Health Youth Gender Program.

Janssen is a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine and the director of the Gender and Sexuality Service at NYU Langone Medical Center’s Child Study Center.

Members of the Board of Medicine and Board of Osteopathic Medicine agreed to develop Florida guidelines for the treatment of gender dysphoria in August. Though the boards had not previously delved into the issue, they agreed to do so after Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo asked them to tackle it.

Ladapo asked the boards to prohibit patients under the age of 18 from receiving sex-reassignment surgery and puberty-blocking hormone treatments. Ladapo also asked the boards to change the standard-of-care rules to require older patients seeking gender-affirming care to sign a consent form and to wait 24 hours before starting such treatments.

The state set a four-hour public meeting in Tallahassee where the medical boards would hear from experts and members of the public. But the meeting was canceled due to Hurricane Ian. Had the Sept. 30 meeting not been canceled, the boards could have started developing a state-specific rule before the General Election. 

The term “transgender” refers to people whose sex assigned at birth does not align with how they identify, according to the American Association of Psychiatry.

Gender dysphoria refers to psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity. And though gender dysphoria often begins in childhood, some people may not experience it until after puberty or much later, the psychiatry association maintains.

The Agency for Health Care Administration, which houses the Medicaid program, provided data to Florida Politics showing that 12 children and 13 adults underwent surgical procedures in Fiscal Year 2021-22 that Medicaid reimbursed. The most common procedure for both children and adults was a simple mastectomy, with three children and six adults undergoing the procedure sometime between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022.