English Page for the project🏔️🌷

ENHANCE GENDER-AFFIRMING CARE IN JAPAN 

- aiming a society in which values diversity and embraces individual as they are- 

Summary:

 Toyama University Hospital established a Gender Center in 2021 to provide surgical treatment for transgender individuals. The center is a multidisciplinary team of professionals across six departments, aiming to support patients in living in a body aligned with their gender identity.  

 Beyond medical care, the center hosts biannual "Hokuriku GI Meetings" to broaden understanding of gender issues across fields like education and law.

 The Gender Center's mission is twofold: (1) to comprehensively support safe surgeries and (2) to help individuals live authentically. In 2024, the hospital became a GI Society-accredited facility, allowing some surgeries to be covered by insurance. We aim to tackle challenges in gender medicine, especially the lack of common evaluation criteria and the shortage of specialized providers in Japan.

 Patients have shared hardships like needing to travel out of prefecture for surgery, long wait times, and lack of postoperative care nearby. These problems highlight the need for more accessible, standardized, and high-quality gender medical services.

Aims:

 Translate "GENDER-Q", a standardized questionnaire to objectively assess treatment outcomes and patient satisfaction before and after surgery.
 Foster young healthcare professionals by supporting participation in international and domestic conferences, improving the international standard of Japan’s gender medicine.

Fundraising Goals:

 ¥3,000,000 to support GENDER-Q translation, international conference participation (WPATH 2026 in Mexico), and other operational costs.

Project milestones: 

 Start creating Japanese version of GENDER-Q by August 2025, attend WPATH and give presentations by November 2026.

Future Vision:

 By improving healthcare quality and accessibility, the center hopes to enhance the self-esteem, acceptance, education, and economic prospects of transgender individuals in Japan, ultimately reducing discrimination and social hardships.

Message from the project leader: 

 We would like to enhance gender-affirming care in Japan to aspire "a society in which values diversity and embrace individual as they are.”
 
 I am Toshihiko Satake, Director of the Gender Center at the University of Toyama Hospital and Professor at Department of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery. Hokuriku (northwestern part of Japan) originally had the Hokuriku GID Network, which provided psychiatric care and hormone therapy for people with gender incongruence. However, there were no facilities to provide surgical treatment, forcing those people who needed surgical treatment to undergo surgery in other regions in Japan or even outside of Japan.
 
 In 2020, I opened the Department of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery at Toyama University Hospital and received requests for surgical treatments from the doctors of the Hokuriku GID Network. This was a great joy for me, as I had always looked for ways to help people with gender incongruence.

 
 We proceeded with preparations and established the Gender Center in October 2021. And in September 2024, the center became an accredited facility of the Japanese Society for GI (Gender Incongruence), which enabled us to provide some treatments covered by medical insurance. Nowadays, people are coming for the consultation, not only from Hokuriku but also from all over Japan.
 
 Many of those seeking surgery tell us that they “don't even want to look at their own bodies,” reminding us of the pain of living with discomfort in one's own body. Through gender-affirming care, including surgical treatments, we would like to support the people with gender incongruence so that they could feel better about their bodies and live their lives in their own way.
 
 However, gender-affirming care is not yet sufficiently evidence or data-based. To evaluate satisfaction and QOL (quality of life) before and after gender-affirming care, including surgery, and to lead to better treatment, we would like to translate the evaluation tool “GENDER-Q” into Japanese and use it widely in medical facilities in Japan. The training of young medical professionals is also essential for the future development of treatment. Furthermore, gender incongruence is still not fully recognized by the public, and those people with gender incongruence and their families first face difficulties in gathering information. To eliminate prejudice and misunderstanding and to spread correct knowledge, we would like to make more people aware of the term “gender incongruence” through this crowdfunding project.

 
 Please help us create an inclusive environment where individuals can express themselves, pursue their interests, and live according to their values without fear of discrimination or judgment.

 We sincerely appreciate your warm donation.

We appreciate your interest in our project. This page explains how to support our project in English.

If you enable Google Translate, the Japanese page will appear in English and other languages.

Link ▶https://readyfor.jp/projects/gender

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If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

▶︎giprs@med.u-toyama.ac.jp