(DCNF)—Gender researchers plan to steer thousands of dollars awarded by the Biden administration towards travel to transgender medical conferences, pronoun pins and payments to activists who work at LGBTQ clinics, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Biden administration awarded nearly $160,000 to University of Cincinnati researchers in June 2024 to launch a program to train students in health-related fields to work on “transgender and gender expansive” (TGGE) health, according to the description of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant.
“Transgender/gender expansive (TGGE) individuals are understudied, underrepresented, and underreported in health research, despite facing enormous gender inequities that affect morbidity and mortality,” the description explains. “The Healthcare Interprofessional Gender Health, Education and Research (HIGHER) Academy will augment the workforce of researchers focusing on the health of TGGE individuals by creating an adaptable, reproducible, sustainable research course for interprofessional graduate students that is taught exclusively by TGGE individuals and cisgender women.”
Set to begin in spring 2025, the program invites fifteen students enrolled in a master’s, doctoral, or postdoctoral programs to participate in one of three tracks to “promote TGGE health”: medical and surgical interventions, structural and social interventions or psychological and behavioral interventions, according to the website.
Budget justification documents obtained by the DCNF via a public records request detail how the researchers will spend the taxpayer funds.
Across four years, the program intends to spend $20,106 on instructor consultant services, $40,000 on honorariums for Community-Academic Advisory Board (CAAB) members, $31,500 on student stipends and $14,000 on food for its annual symposium, according to an annual breakdown.
Jonah Yokoyama, one of the leadership team members who documents show will be paid $38.66 per hour for work as a program consultant, is a “gender affirming care specialist” at Equitas Health University Medical Center.
Patients at Equitas Health, which bills itself as “one of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ and HIV/AIDS-serving organizations,” are advised online that they do not need to consult with a psychiatrist or therapist to start taking cross-sex hormones.
“Your care team will listen to you and help you map out a hormone plan to reach your goals, including those that affirm non-binary or genderqueer identities,” the website states. “We know that no two paths to affirmation are the same.”
The grant’s principal investigator, Shanna Stryker, is also a physician offering “gender-affirming care” at Equitas Health.
Members of the HIGHER Academy Community Advisory Board (Credit: Screenshot/HIGHER Academy)
Community organizations or individuals “with lived experience” who join more than half of the program’s Community-Academic Advisory Board (CAAB) meetings will be awarded $500 every six months, per the budget document. There are 20 members of the CAAB in 2024-2025, according to the program website.
Eliot, who the website describes as a “fat, white, AuDHD, agender, queer, disabled spoonie, singleton, and failed misanthrope,” is one member of the board.
“A former digital marketing professional who was thrust into poverty when they became unemployable, they’ve been forced to master the unnecessarily complex & exhausting maze of government assistance simply to survive,” Eliot’s bio continues. “An amateur rabble-rouser, they enjoy using their limited spoons to sprinkle chaos into the cosmos by challenging the status quo and advocating for liberation for all. Because rest is resistance, they find solace in spending time with their feline roommate, Galen, and creating art and poetry.”
Students will each receive a $700 stipend for participating in HIGHER Academy. Organizers also plan to spend $600 on pronoun pins and $1,500 on custom lanyards for students.
The budget proposal includes funds for travel to World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) conferences. Over the next four years, $5,000 will be budgeted for a faculty member, scholar or student to attend the international WPATH conferences and $2,500 for domestic travel to the United States chapter conference.
Court documents unsealed last year revealed WPATH, which is often cited as an authority on transgender health, removed minimum age recommendations for sex-change surgeries from its guidance in response to political and legal concerns. The Biden administration, as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), pressured WPATH to remove the age minimums.
WPATH also suppressed or failed to complete evidence reviews that contradicted its recommendations, courts records show.
The initial grant application highlights how the program will incorporate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), recruiting at least 30% of applicants from groups “underrepresented in healthcare.”
“Some examples of community partners we will engage include the Black Power Initiative, Cincinnati Black Pride, Heartland Trans Wellness, and the Cincinnati Trans Advocacy Council,” it states.
UC President Neville G. Pinto announced in February that the school would begin examining DEI programs and initiatives. However, the latest update explains “most DEI programs and practices are continuing at UC.”
“Soon after UC announced that DEI would be halted to comply with the February 14 ‘Dear Colleague’ letter, a U.S. District judge in Baltimore granted a preliminary injunction to certain aspects of President Trump’s executive order to end government support for DEI,” the university’s website explains.
The University of Cincinnati and HIGHER Academy’s program manager did not respond to requests for comment about the program’s status. The NIH also did not return a request for comment.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/CSPAN)
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