Grant: Project Grant

Trans and non-binary youth (TNBY) are young people who feel that their felt sense of gender doesn't match the one that was assigned to them at birth.For many TNBY, body changes brought about by puberty are very distressing because they generate feelings of dissonance between their body and their felt gender. Gender affirming medical care, such as puberty blocker medication and hormone therapy, have been shown to significantly reduce distress. Other factors leading to improvement of TNBY well-being include strong family support and access to a community and inclusive spaces.However, there is a lack of integrative and in-dept understanding of the pathways that TNBY are taking, their journey into care, as well as how their social and family contexts affect their experience of gender affirmation, that is, how gender identity is respected and validated, as well as their wellbeing, over time, during the crucial period of puberty and early medical transition.This international study examine how TNBY who wish to access gender affirming care such as puberty blockers or hormones therapy navigate this journey into adolescence, especially with regard to their wellbeing and their experience of gender affirmation.We will pay a specific attention to their environment.To do so, the team will follow a group of 90 TNBY and their families in order to understand their experience over time.These youth, who will be living in Canada, England, Switzerland, Australia, India and the United States, will be just starting puberty at the beginning of the project and will have expressed a desire to start gender affirming medical interventions.During three years, we will meet youth and caregiver four times to know how they're doing, how they experience care and access to it, how they feel their gender identity is respected and affirmed by people around them.This will allow us to develop a nuanced understanding of their needs and experience as navigate adolescence and gender affirming medical care.