This time of year is both incredibly busy and exciting for all of us at Mazzoni Center as we prepare to present the annual Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference, which takes place June 4-6 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. This event got its start back in 2002 as a small, grassroots gathering at a Quaker Meeting House. Last year, the conference spanned three full days and drew more than 3,200 people from around the United States and beyond.
Since its inception, the Trans-Health Conference has sought to address the holistic health and wellness needs of transgender individuals, their family members and loved ones, including health care, safety, education, employment, housing, legal issues and social support. Each year, the general conference is free to attend, since we want to make it accessible to as many people as possible.
The many people involved in planning and coordinating the Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference work every year to ensure we are aware and prepared to meet the multiple needs of those who attend, whether it be the thousands of trans and gender-nonconforming individuals who join us each year, along with their family members and allies, or the growing number of professionals who are coming to build their cultural competence in working with trans folks. We understand that each individual is bringing a unique set of concerns and experiences, and we want the conference to be a safe space and a meaningful experience for everyone.
None of this would be possible without the contributions of our planning committee and working groups. These are all volunteers who dedicate a great deal of their personal time each year to helping make the Trans-Health Conference a success.
The theme of the 2015 conference is “Cultural Competency/Cultural Humility.” This was developed by the members of our planning committee, who wanted to ensure we’re doing all we can to respond to the diverse needs of our attendees. As a group, the committee and our staff have worked to intentionally be inclusive to all genders and expressions of trans/gender-variant/gender-nonconforming experiences. Some key initiatives this year included: integrating youth activities into the day-to-day programming and adding youth keynotes to the “general” conference schedule; incorporating non-traditional/non-classroom-style workshops into the schedule; as well as adding bilingual workshops and a special resource fair for Spanish speakers.
A glance at this year’s schedule gives you an idea of the range of topics covered over the three days — everything from aging issues to spirituality, from navigating the Affordable Care Act to advocating for the rights of your trans-identified child in their school. There are workshops for people of color, military veterans, teachers and parents, trans-identified Muslims, sex workers and much more. In recent years, we’ve worked to incorporate more international perspectives and this year will welcome presenters from Russia, South Africa and Argentina, among other places.
The conference also features a parallel “professional” track that is aimed at providers in the medical, legal and social-services fields, with the goal of sharing the latest information and increasing the availability of culturally competent health care and other services for trans-identified individuals, wherever they may live. Now in its third year, this segment of our conference continues to grow, and to demonstrate that there is a strong interest in learning more about the health care and legal needs impacting trans folks, and how to effectively engage with and advocate for us as individuals and as a larger community.
We’re thrilled to welcome Tiq Milan, a writer, strategic-media consultant and a spokesperson for GLAAD, as one of our keynote speakers. He is a national spokesperson for GLAAD, discussing the latest developments in transgender rights, and served as a contributing author to the newly released anthology “Trans Bodies, Trans Selves.” We’re also ecstatic to have Trudie Jackson, an Arizona-based community mobilizer and public-health advocate, and an enrolled tribal member of Navajo Nation from Teec Nos Pos, who will deliver a keynote at 1 p.m. June 5.
And new this year, we’ll have two youth keynotes — both taking place just before the “main” keynote on Thursday and Friday. Thursday’s speaker will be Turner Stulting, an activist and student of public policy and social justice at Bucknell University who was recently named to the Trans 100 list. Friday’s speaker is Peter Fair, a 19-year-old, queer-identified, gender-nonconforming transgender man who attends Harrisburg Area Community College, and has been active in LGBTQ work and GSA organizing for several years. We felt it was really important to highlight some of the amazing work being done by younger trans activists, and bring their voices into the larger conference this year.
A drop-in legal clinic from 9 a.m.-noon June 6, staffed by volunteer attorneys and law students, will provide legal information to conference attendees. Other conference highlights include a dedicated “youth space” and free activities for young people attending the conference, daily 12-step meetings for individuals in recovery, a spirituality room and much more.
The Latino Village Resource Fair, which is something new, invites Spanish-speaking providers and service workers to the conference from 2-5 p.m. June 5 to engage with members of the trans Latino community. On June 6 we’ll have a “Healing and Restoration Space” for our people of color communities, who face enormous amounts of oppression, discrimination and harassment. This will be a space for holistic healing and recharging, with leaders providing encouragement and bonding techniques around many traumatic issues our communities face.
And that’s just a taste of what’s in store. The full schedule and details about this year’s conference are available at www.transhealth.org
If you’ve never been to the conference before, it can be an overwhelming experience — but in a positive way, we hope! The sheer size and scale of the event, and the feeling of being surrounded by so many trans and gender-nonconforming people in the same space, is an unusual experience for many of us. I’ve heard from many attendees that they feel a tremendous sense of empowerment and belonging just being there. And if you’re an ally or would like to become a better ally to trans folks, we absolutely encourage you to check it out as well.
Samantha Dato is the Trans-Health Conference coordinator at Mazzoni Center.