Community
Changing Medicine Through specialized care, UI’s LGBTQ Clinic has saved countless lives in its first decade. BY ADRIA CARPENTER
W
hen Dr. Nicole Nisly met her first transgender patient, she didn’t know what to say. It’s common among healthcare providers. What name should I use? How should I refer to them? Should I ask? Her patient was a trans woman who had transitioned 10 years prior, and Nisly could feel the tension in the air. She was unprepared. For trans people, that unease is instantly recognizable, and it comes in different flavors, ranging from well-intentioned curiosity to outright disgust. Around a third of trans people reported having at least one negative encounter with a healthcare provider because they were trans, including verbal harassment, refusal of treatment or having to teach their provider about trans people to receive care. A fourth said they didn’t see a doctor when needed because of fear of mistreatment, a survey by the National Center for Trans Equality (NCTE) found. “We’ve had a few providers that just say, ‘We’re not going to take care of an LGBTQ patient,’” said Bridgette Hintermeister, a registered nurse at LGBTQ Clinic at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (UIHC). “That is one of the areas of discrimination that we see. They don’t feel comfortable, and they don’t want to learn.” But Nisly resolved that next time, she’d be prepared. In November 2011, she went to a seminar
led by a student group called TransCollaborations. The group, consisting of mostly gender nonconforming people, shared their stories about interacting with the healthcare community. The students said that hospitals were often inhospitable towards them. Between the lack of properly trained physicians to staff that didn’t
Timeline of Medicaid bans and lawsuits in Iowa
Mika Covington called it “an emotional day” when a judge ruled last year Iowa couldn’t prevent Medicaid from paying for the genderaffirming surgery she needed. The path to that legal victory for Covington and all transgender Iowans started 14 years earlier.
March 2007
Corrections employee,
regulation banning
The state legislature,
sues IDOC for refusing
the use of Medicaid
with both cham-
to make reasonable
funds for gender-af-
bers controlled by
accommodations for
firming procedures
Democrats, passes
him as he transitioned
prescribed by their
a bill amending the
genders. It’s the first
doctors. Vroegh, Beal
Iowa Civil Rights Act
lawsuit to rely on the
and Good all receive
(ICRA) to prohibit
ICRA’s gender identity
legal support from the
discrimination “based
protection.
ACLU of Iowa.
September 2017
June 2018
BY PAUL BRENNAN 32 February 2022 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV303
upon a person’s
use the correct name or pronouns, to the general pricks and thorns of an unequipped healthcare system, they had to regularly out themselves just to find a clinic willing to help them. While listening to their stories, Nisly, then the chief diversity officer for the University of Iowa, thought about her own discomfort and lack of By Paul Brennan
ACLU of Iowa
sexual orientation or
August 2017
gender identity.” Gov.
Jesse Vroegh, a
Polk County District
Chet Culver signs it
transgender man
Carol Ann Beal and
Court Judge Arthur
into law.
and former Iowa
EerieAnna Good sue
Gamble rules in favor
Department of
to overturn the state
of Beal and Good,
