The People’s Health & Wellness Clinic in Barre has launched free gender-affirming care services to make health care more accessible to clients, regardless of income or insurance, according to a press release this week.
Shawna Trader is the executive director of the Rainbow Bridge Community Center, a nonprofit serving the LGBTQ+ community in Central Vermont that has partnered with the clinic to launch the effort. The 38-year-old Barre resident has also been receiving primary and gender-affirming care at the clinic for about two years.
“As a trans person and a leader in my queer community, it’s incredibly important that gender affirming care is available and accessible,” said Trader, who has 20 years of experience in health care. “We’ll have healthier and safer people out there just knowing that there’s a spot here in town that they can go to.”
Gender affirming care supports people whose gender identity does not match their assigned gender at birth. It includes a range of services from primary care to hormone therapy and surgery.
The free care, funded by a United Way grant, is already available at the Barre clinic to patients aged 18 and above, said Executive Director Daniel Barlow, and staff are being provided additional training.
Founded 30 years ago, the People’s Health & Wellness Clinic provides free health care to 600 people in Central Vermont annually, with the help of six staff members and 30 volunteer doctors and nurses, he said. It is part of a network of nine free nonprofit clinics across the state that aim to make health care more accessible to underserved populations.
The idea for the new grant came from Teal Church, a nurse and the clinic’s director of clinical services, as she was exploring substance disorder prevention and treatment options with the Central Vermont Prevention Coalition.
The data she reviewed “overwhelmingly” indicated the LGBTQ+ community has increased risk of substance use disorder, Church said in an interview. To Church it signaled a gap in services she felt the clinic could fill.
The clinic has partnered with the Rainbow Bridge Community Center in Barre, the Pride Center in Burlington and the Ishtar Collective to help develop and implement what it describes as “culturally competent” gender affirming care that adheres to medical standards.
“We believe that access to food and healthcare are fundamental human rights and building onramps to community care are how we can model the world we want to live in,” said Volney Gordon from the Ishtar Collective, which advocates for Vermont’s sex workers and survivors of human trafficking, in the release.
Some clinic workers have already received additional training, including K.C. Bolton – an internal medicine physician who volunteers at the clinic once a month.
Bolton emphasized the importance of providing inclusive care and said it aligns with his philosophy of serving all patients, including LGBTQ+ patients who often face barriers to treatment and culturally competent care. “I’m proud of the clinic for taking it on,” he said in an interview.
Having served a handful of members from the queer community at the clinic, he said, “From my understanding, it is not an easily accessible resource here in Central Vermont.”
Health care in America is often discriminatory, expensive and inaccessible for the LGBTQ+ community, said Dana Kaplan, executive director of Outright Vermont.
“This work is essential — it goes beyond just using the right pronouns; it’s about equipping staff with the knowledge and skills to dismantle both visible and invisible barriers to healthcare access,” he said in an email. “This leaves far too many in our community unable to access basic care due to cost, distance, or outright exclusion. That’s why providing life-saving, gender-affirming healthcare that supports transgender and nonbinary individuals in living authentically is so critical.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Barre clinic offers free gender affirming care to members of LGBTQ+ community.