It’s often a battle for transgender people to get access to healthcare services. That’s especially true in Central Illinois, where gender-affirming hormone therapy only recently became available.
Dana Garber is the transgender intake coordinator for Planned Parenthood of Illinois in Peoria and Pekin. She began her own hormone therapy in Chicago, the nearest place that offered it at the time. But that option wasn’t available to everyone.
In 2016, the Peoria Transgender Society reached out to various healthcare and mental health providers in the region to try to bring the services closer to home.
“We had a health forum, and we invited all these people to it. We had some mental health providers show up. The only medical provider that showed up was Planned Parenthood," said Garber.
Part of the struggle is finding someone willing and able to provide gender-affirming hormone therapy.
“Endocrinologists might work with people who have endocrine disorders and things like that, but not so much with transgender people. So, it’s finding someone who’s interested in helping our community. That’s the difficult part.”
Planned Parenthood has provided treatment for 1,200 patients since 2016. Garber says about two-thirds of them are downstate.
