iHEAR is proud to announce the new Doctors for Equity project which builds on Sangath’s ongoing participatory work with the LGBTQIA+ community. The LGBTQIA+ communities in India face unequal access to healthcare which is often not affirmative in nature while being disproportionately affected by chronic and communicable diseases. One major obstacle in addressing these inequities is the lack of culturally informed competency-based medical education on LGBTQIA+ affirmative health provision among the Indian medical graduates. Recent policy developments such as the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 and directives from the National Medical Commission mandating LGBTQIA+ affirmative medical education provide an opportunity to address this obstacle. However, there is a lack of a clear roadmap to achieve the goal of queer and trans-affirmative medical education especially at the foundational level.

Doctors for Equity aims to train medical educators across different parts of North India on LGTBQIA+ inclusive health care. This will be done through a national level consultation followed by a series of training sessions in medical colleges across northern India. The training workshops will be conducted by project co-leads who are from the LGBTQIA+ community and/or have expertise in delivering such sessions, in medical education and in LGBTQIA+ health research. The training will focus on LGBTQIA+ affirmative competencies and care, basics of sex, gender and sexuality using interactive activities. The trained medical college faculty will then pilot these learnings in their own colleges. They can thus benefit their own students and patients as well as develop potentially scalable models of LGBTQIA+ affirmative medical education. This work will help achieve LGBTQIA+ inclusive and affirmative healthcare in India and combat the health inequities faced by this marginalized population.