Public Health

About this course

I'm Walter Bockting and I'm the co-director of the program for the Study of LGBT health which is a joint venture between

the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia School of Nursing. And we have a program of research

we do clinical service. We do love education and training in the area of LGBT health. And two areas of our program that I'm

very closely involved in at transgender health and. Ageing. So in the area of Transgender Health we have a long way to go study of transgender developments

across the lifespan and what we're learning dear is really how people's sense of their gender and their gender expression and the way they actualize that in

their lives continues to change. So it's not that people transition and that's the end of it but their development really continues.

So for example what we find is that people who identify in a very binary way become tend to become more non binary as time goes along and people who are very

non binary and defy gender at some point as they further. Develop they actually find more of a middle ground and they have to you know because in our society

we still have a lot of binary gender going on but they also learn to integrate that in a way that's that works for them. In the area of aging

we're looking at how chosen families of LGBT people. And the fact that they needed to develop their own family networks

during their life especially to the current generation older generation of LGBT people. They couldn't really take their families for it for granted.

So some of them had to really create alternative their own families. And we're finding that that's kind of social supports having a dynamic. Social circle of friends

and have deep friendships. That death really is good for your health. And so we're trying to learn from that group.

And once we can be more precise what about these networks. How LGBTQ people keep those vibrance. And what about these networks is

really helps you are your aging and your quality of life. Then we can also bring that to the to the general population.