Narcisse asks H&H about coordinating mental health with gender-affirming care

What does HNH see as the value of coordinating mental health support with gender-affirming care?

Yeah, great.

Thank you for those comments and for the particular question.

I have to say I'm entering my 29th year working at New York City Health and Hospitals as an internist.

And one of the things I most...

proud about our healthcare system is its longstanding history of integration of both physical and behavioral health services through programs like collaborative care and primary care, which focuses on depression and anxiety.

And I would say that coordinating gender-affirming care with mental health support as clinically necessary and, of course, with informed consent, we know and we've heard leads to better mental health outcomes.

So here at New York City Health and Hospitals, this is absolutely a process that we use to provide full care to the patient.

But I'm going to turn it over back to Dr.

Fattal for additional comment.

Yeah, I agree 100%.

And we do it on behalf of the patient, so we don't rely on the patient to have to connect the dots.

So if the patient is already engaged in treatment in primary care, primary care team would make the referral to behavioral health, and the reverse is true.

If someone starts their care in behavioral health and we realize that they need medical services, then we connect them with medical services internally.