As part of Wyoming Equality’s Healthcare Access Project (WEHAP), our team continues to not only search for LGBTQ-aware and -affirming providers, but also for those willing to learn from transgender health experts. In partnership with the University of Wyoming’s Wyoming Institute for Disabilities, WEHAP intends to launch an educational series on gender-affirming care beginning in late summer or early fall. Using the Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) model, WEHAP staff and expert medical providers will present on topics like hormone care, managing HIV risk, reproductive health specific to the needs of the transgender population. Project ECHO also provides a space for discussion without judgment, allowing for important questions to be asked without anxiety around how the question might be perceived.

Even if hormone care requires in-person assistance in the future, telehealth continues to remove some of the barriers that prevent our community from seeking medical help. Since telehealth is inherently less public, some small town patients have fewer fears about being seen or heard talking about their sexual history or health conditions. Additionally, providers can operate from locations that might otherwise be out of reach to patients, providing better access to services that may otherwise only be available in cities like Cheyenne, Casper, or Jackson. For access to services like sexual health care, therapy, or gender affirming care, privacy and the removal of geographical barriers are key to improving outcomes for LGBTQ individuals.

Stated simply, telemedicine is providing answers to problems that all Wyomingites face, with additional advantages for communities that often put off or decline to seek non-emergency healthcare. Even if limits are put on the scope of care online providers can offer, we know that rural communities have additional barriers to care, whether they be the social implications of a small clinic’s staff culture, distance alone, or the outright blockages that can occur during winter or natural disaster. 

As Wyoming moves forward in increasing providers involved in telehealth, our community has to see telemedicine as an essential asset in rural healthcare rather than a barrier to returning our lives to normal. Telemedicine is not just essential during a pandemic, but also any time that there is a barrier or risk to coming into a clinic or doctor’s office. Telemedicine options prevent sick people from being in the same spaces as healthy people, they assist in cases of short staffed hospitals and clinics, and they empower people from communities with little to no resources in specialty or primary care to take charge of their health in ways that have never been possible before.