Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration is ramping up funding to healthcare facilities to boost medical staffing and care for New York’s transgender patients in a two-year pilot program — but critics slammed the gender-bending policy as “morally irresponsible.”
The state Health Department recently awarded new contracts for “The Transgender Clinical Scholars Training Pilot Program” worth $500K to Mount Sinai Hospital.
Additional funding was also provided to Community Health Care Project-Callen Lorde Health Center in Manhattan and Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, The Post has learned.
“The launch of this new pilot program reaffirms the Department’s longstanding commitment to deliver compassionate, affirmative health care to all New Yorkers,” DOH said in a statement.
Under the new program, the health care institutions will train already licensed clinicians in the medical care and well-being of those patients who are initiating or undergoing gender affirming transition and individuals who have transitioned to their self-identified gender.
Gender reassignment surgeries will not not be part of the pilot medical training program, health officials said, but doctors trained in the program would be exposed to the appropriate care and treatment of those having undergone surgery.
Dr. Joshua Safer, executive director of Mount Sinai Health System’s Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery told The Post on Tuesday, “As far as I know, New York is the first state to step up to improve access to care for transgender people like this.”
Other states, including Florida, have moved to restrict transgender treatments, particularly for minors.
The state is providing Mount Sinai $500,000 — $250,000 per year — under the two-year contract.
Safer said Mount Sinai plans to expand the number of doctors with expertise in providing gender affirming health care — covering the cost of training 2 fellows each year or 4 total at its Comprehensive Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery.
But critics blasted the funding, saying New York should not be encouraging residents to undergo life altering transgender surgeries.
“At a time when European nations are quickly moving away from transgender surgeries, it is morally irresponsible for New York State to fund training programs to abet this cause,” said Bill Donohue of the Catholic League.
“New York state should not be encouraging the mutilation of the human body because some people mistakenly think they can switch their sex. They cannot change their chromosomal makeup, so the `identity’ game needs to end,” said Donohue.
He noted the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is moving to ban transgender treatments at Catholic Hospitals.
Democrat-turned Republican Brooklyn state Assemblyman Alec Brook-Krasny, who has come under fire for railing against transgender people, also raised concerns.
“I think it’s just going too far. If it’s to provide services to children under 18, I’m against it,’ Brook-Krasny said of the new program training doctors for transgender care.
But Dr. Safer of Mount Sinai said the criticism is an inaccurate portrayal of a serious medical condition.
“Gender identity is the term we use for the brain biology that tells people what sex they are. The term can be a bit confusing. But it’s not an identity that is chosen,” Safer said.
