5 Key LGBTQ+ Resources Every Health Worker Should Bookmark

Have you ever found yourself needing to defend gender-affirming care, but not sure how to best summarize the scientific consensus? (You know that there’s scientific consensus, right?) Or dealing with the nagging feeling that your practices are maybe not best practices when it comes to serving LGBTQ+ people? Would you like to be able to better empathize with patients or clients who experience gender dysphoria? Do you want to be a better advocate for intersex folks who seek your care, but aren’t sure what you can do?

Today’s reporting brings you a collection of resources that I and people in my queer and trans communities think health and wellness care providers need to have in their back pocket so you can act with confidence and stand your ground in the face of pushback or uncertainty.

These five resources are foundational, reliable, and regularly updated. Some are deeply academic. Others are made by and for community members outside of institutional power. Together, they offer a well-rounded, affirming, and informed starting place, whether you’re just beginning to integrate affirming LGBTQ+ care into your practice, or you’re looking to fill in some blind spots and deepen your work.

If you’ve ever had to explain to a colleague, supervisor, policymaker, parent, or annoying dude at a party that gender-affirming care is evidence-based care, you’re going to want to keep this resource handy. Hosted by Cornell University, this literature review collected all peer-reviewed studies (in English, from 1991 to 2017) that sought evidence about how transitioning affects trans people’s mental health, physical well-being, and overall quality of life.

It’s not exactly waiting room reading, but it is an indispensable academic reference, especially helpful for providers seeking solid citations for policy memos, grant proposals, or internal advocacy work. (Or just winning an argument.)

This one isn’t published in a medical journal. But it changed — and probably saved — my life, and the lives of numerous other trans people I know.

The Gender Dysphoria Bible is a community-built, comprehensive guide to the many ways gender dysphoria can look and feel for trans people. It's clear, compassionate, and rooted in lived experience. For many trans people, it offers the language we were never given — the "Oh" moment that clicks things into place.

This sounds strange to write down, but it was reading this resource that made me realize that most people don’t think about how if would be fine if they got breast cancer because at least then they could get rid of their breasts (made me realize I was thinking that way in the first place). It isn’t perfect — none of these resources are, and in this case I’m especially not very fond of how the authors write about Indigenous “third sex” communities. (Bonus, if you’re into queer theory: check out Talia Bhatt’s work on the third sex.) But I can’t ignore or dismiss the impact it’s had on my own life and the lives of thousands of other trans people.

For health and wellness providers, especially those unfamiliar with dysphoria outside of the DSM, or popular descriptions that call on the “born in the wrong body” trope, this resource is invaluable. It’s not necessarily diagnostic, but it is illuminating, especially for understanding how gendered distress can manifest in emotional, physical, and social ways. It’s also available in multiple languages, and can be a great resource to share with gender-questioning people to help them frame their own experiences.

Intersex patients have long been left out of LGBTQ+ health conversations, or worse, pathologized and harmed by the very systems meant to support them. This section of the campaign page from #4intersex is a compact, powerful toolkit directed at healthcare professionals. It includes definitions, best practices, patient-centered language tips, and context around medically unnecessary surgeries that continue to be performed on intersex infants and children, even as basic affirming care for trans children is outlawed.

The truth is that we really have no idea how many people are intersex. Most intersex people who aren’t identified as such at birth find out in the course of seeking care for infertility, but we also know that some intersex people are able to conceive. There is also some contention around conditions like Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, which most medical professionals currently do not consider an intersex condition or Differences of Sex Development. Many people with PCOS, myself included, do find space for ourselves under the intersex umbrella, which widens the community it would cover quite a bit! (I’m excited to be writing an in-depth story for you about this very subject. Stay tuned!)

This well-curated guide from Harvard's medical library offers a solid foundation in LGBTQIA+ health literature, with sections on terminology, research databases, cultural competency, continuing education, and even a provider directory for making referrals. It's helpful for both students and seasoned practitioners, and serves as a jumping-off point for deeper scholarly exploration and clinical action.

Through this portal you can build out your professional reference library, join a relevant association, create a personalized set of best practices guidelines for yourself and your colleagues or staff, or join a research group to expand on the body of research currently being threatened by “anti-woke” style crackdowns.

For continuing education in the field of LGBTQ+ care, Fenway’s Health Education Center is the gold standard. Backed by decades of LGBTQ+ community-centered care, this site offers toolkits, webinars, brief guides, and recorded trainings — many with CME credit options — that you can share with your team or work through solo, all organized in an easy-to-use and simple-to-filter database.

No matter the size or configuration of your professional space, there is something here you can take, learn from, and apply to your workflow this week, right away, and there are hours of material here to dive into, so don’t wait to get started!

When you are just starting out trying to build an inclusive and affirming space, it can be a bit overwhelming. These resources might add to that feeling at first glance — I know that it looks like a lot to take in — but that’s what Well Beings is here for, to help you on that path, to keep you in a steady diet of new and challenging information, and to help you stay focused on the stuff that matters.

If you have a favorite LGBTQ+ health resource that you think more providers should know about, I’d love to hear from you. If you’re not sure how to use one of these in your setting, or want help thinking through where to start, shoot me a message. I’ll never promise to have every answer, but I’m building this community to be a place where we can ask better questions together, and I want you along for that ride.