Gender-Affirming Care Question Set

The American College Health Association “opposes any policy, at any level, that restricts, limits, or discourages access to gender-related services for transgender and nonbinary youth and/or adults in  our communities.”

Given the current hostile and explicitly anti-trans climate, the ACHA Promoting LGBTQIA+ Equity Task Force is dedicated to providing institutions with tools to support transgender and nonbinary students to help further ACHA’s top strategic goal of improving diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and accessibility.

It has been well established that access to gender-affirming care greatly improves mental health and well-being. The executive summary provided to the task force comparing transgender and nonbinary students with cisgender students in the Spring 2022 and Spring 2023 National College Health Assessment (NCHA) reference groups showed major mental health disparities, greatly emphasizing the need for all of us to be trusted advocates for transgender and nonbinary students.

Because this question set is not included in the national instrument, it would need to be added as additional questions for a fee by each institution. As proposed by the Promoting LGBTQIA+ Equity Task Force, the cost to add these extra questions to your NCHA will start at $1,500 for ACHA Institutional Members, and at $2,000 for non-member institutions.

Alternatively, institutions could use these questions (or adapted versions of them) to meet their needs internally.

Why Use the National College Health Assessment to Collect These Data?

The NCHA offers a rare opportunity to learn from the students themselves about what is going on in their lives in terms of their health and well-being – particularly as it relates to their academic performance and mental health.

Further, ACHA’s Sexual Health Services Survey asks about gender-affirming care and other LGBTQ health concerns, but it does not collect information from the actual students being served.

How Could Institutions Use the Data Collected?

By comparing outcomes (e.g., health, academic performance, etc.) of transgender and nonbinary students who are receiving gender-affirming care with students who are not, institutions would be better able to meet the needs of their students by providing them with a clearer understanding of their lived experiences.

Such data would allow institutions to understand the [unmet] needs of transgender and nonbinary students on their campuses and help make the case for beginning to offer – or improving access to – gender-affirming care.

These data would also help advocate for the inclusion of gender-affirming care in student health insurance plans (and other insurance plans).