(Photo from Admiral Rachel L. Levine, MD’s Twitter)
ORLANDO | Admiral Rachel L. Levine, MD, Assistant Secretary for Health for the Department of Health and Human Services, met with local LGBTQ rights activists at the LGBT+ Center Orlando March 9.
Levine sat down for a closed-door roundtable discussion with members of Equality Florida, Metro Inclusive Health, Zebra Coalition and The Center Orlando to talk about several topics impacting the LGBTQ community including access to gender-affirming care in state and across the country.
“We heard about the challenges many different actions and laws that have either been in the past or are being considered that target the LGBTQAI+ community, particularly vulnerable transgender youth and gender nonbinary youth, but actually the community at large,” Levine said in an interview with Watermark after the roundtable.
Met with @equalityfl, @MetroInclusive, @ZebraCoalition & @lgbtcenterorl to talk about @POTUS’ strategy to end the #HIV epidemic, and access to gender affirming care. Gender affirming care is medically necessary care based on decades of research and evidence. pic.twitter.com/0bxYZnsK5Z
— ADM Rachel Levine (@HHS_ASH) March 9, 2023
LGBTQ activists have been concerned with how many bills are coming out of state legislatures that are focused on stripping away rights for the LGBTQ community. Nearly 400 bills have been introduced in 38 states with roughly three out of every four specifically attacking transgender youth in the areas of health care and education.
“I think it sends a terrible message,” Levine says. “There are significant health disparities for our community, particularly for [trans and nonbinary] youth and their families, and we are working to close those health disparities. Youth who are marginalized, who are not accepted by their family, their community or their school and don’t have access to evidence-based care have significant mental health issues — anxiety, depression, risk of suicide. And the evidence has shown over and over again that trans youth that are accepted by their family, that are accepted by their community and school, do have access to evidence-based care actually have excellent mental health outcomes. So these laws and actions have the potential to significantly harm them and harm their mental health.”
Levine, who is one of the few openly transgender government officials in the U.S. and the first tarns person to hold an office that required Senate confirmation, adds while the states are introducing and passing these anti-LGBTQ laws, the Biden administration stands firmly on the side of the queer community.
“The President, the Vice President, [HHS] Secretary [Xavier] Becerra, myself and others, strongly support the broader LGBTQAI+ community, and particularly these vulnerable youth, their families and their providers,” she says. “I was at the White House on Pride Day last year when the president signed a number of executive orders that included HHS working on measures to prevent conversion therapy, working to protect youth in the juvenile justice system and in the foster care system and many other different actions.”
In June of last year, President Joe Biden signed an executive order Advancing Equality for LGBTQI+ Individuals. Within the EO, Biden states his administration will address discriminatory legislative attacks against LGBTQI+ children and families, directing key agencies to protect families and children; prevent so-called “conversion therapy” with a historic initiative to protect children from the harmful practice; safeguard health care, and programs designed to prevent youth suicide; support LGBTQI+ children and families by launching a new initiative to protect foster youth, prevent homelessness, and improve access to federal programs; and take new, additional steps to advance LGBTQI+ equality.
Biden also addressed the world’s ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic during World AIDS Day last year, renewing his administration’s fight to end the global pandemic by 2030. The goal of ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic is a “challenging but realistic” one, says Levine.
“I graduated medical school 40 years ago, in 1983. I started my pediatric residency program at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City in 1983, and I saw babies who had HIV/AIDS and were dying of opportunistic infections, and I saw their mothers who were also dying of opportunistic infections and some of their fathers. Then I saw teenagers who developed HIV for many different reasons who were dying of HIV/AIDS, and there was absolutely nothing that we could do,” she says.
With advances in medications and the development of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, or PrEP, HIV has gone from a death sentence to a manageable chronic condition, but Levine says the key to ending the pandemic by 2030 is making sure that these life-saving medications are getting to those who need them.
“The principles behind ending the HIV epidemic are focusing on specific states, in specific communities, right here in Florida and across the country, targeting treatment to the most vulnerable, looking at the all the social determinants of health and trying to get the prevention and the treatments we have to the people who need it most. That’s what we’re working on, that’s what we’re dedicated to doing and that’s how we end the HIV epidemic,” she says.
Levine’s visit to Orlando is among dozens the assistant secretary has been to and continues to attend, speaking with LGBTQ rights activists since she assumed her position in March 2021.
To stay up-to-date with what the HHS is doing to support gender-affirming care and fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic, go to HHS.gov.
