Turning Point: Empathetic Outreach (Q&A with MBL SPINES Alumnus) | Nature

[MBL SPINES course alumnus] Kale Edmiston, a postdoc at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, uses neuroimaging to study mood and anxiety disorders. He describes how living as an openly transgender researcher has inspired his outreach endeavours.

Has your experience as a transgender scientist informed your outreach?

Yes. I was the only out transgender PhD candidate at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. As word got out, I started getting contacted by members of the transgender community asking for health-care assistance. Few health-care professionals are trained in transgender issues, which contributes to this group’s lack of access to health care. And 41% of this population in the United States reports at least one suicide attempt, according to the 2014 National Transgender Discrimination Survey.

What did you do with this information?

I co-founded the Trans Buddy Program, which operates through Vanderbilt and aims to improve health-care outcomes for transgender people. Read more of the article here.

Source: Turning point: Empathetic Outreach | Nature