Editorial: Improving health care for gender diverse youth through education and training
Christopher G. AhnAllen
Abstract
As a global community, there is increasing understanding and acceptance that children and adolescents must not conform their gender identity and expression to that of their sex assigned at birth. Until recently, the cultural norm was an expectation that children and adolescents would be raised by their caregivers to express themselves in ways that matched their sex assigned at birth. While there has been a significant cultural shift to identify gender identity as an important concept that is related to human development, there is not yet consensus on how caregivers and healthcare systems ought to attend to this awareness.
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Dr. Christopher AhnAllen is the Co-Director of Psychology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Dr. AhnAllen directs a Gender Diversity Clinic at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital and is a co-founding member of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Transgender Program. He has previously served as a member of the Interdisciplinary Transgender Treatment Team at VA Boston Healthcare System. His clinical interests are focused on the provision of individual psychotherapy to support gender-affirming services associated with gender identity and expression. Dr. AhnAllen’s academic publications have included a focus on the importance of increasing education and training engagement in LGBT services within psychiatry residency training and academic medical centers. Dr. AhnAllen is a clinical psychologist by training and completed his PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston.