Faculty Director: Dr. Odrin Castillo

The LGBTQ Medicine Area of Concentration is a longitudinal curriculum designed to broaden the resident’s understanding of providing medical care to LGBT patients. LGBT medicine is a new, rapidly evolving field of medicine, born of necessity in the context of health disparities between LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ patients.

This track focuses on three broad learning objectives:
(1) Initiation, titration, and maintenance of gender-affirming hormone therapy;
(2) Sexually-transmitted disease prevention and treatment;
(3) Preventive and primary care in LGBTQ patients of all ages.

Residents in this track, through supervised patient care, didactics, conferences and community outreach, will gain medical experience caring for LGBTQ patients and advocacy experience working with LGBTQ community leaders. We have had a long-standing partnership with the Long Beach LGBTQ Center (affectionately referred to as The Center), and have now established a primary care clinic on-site at The Center. We have patients coming in for gender-affirming hormone therapy, physicals, STD treatment and prevention, and more. This gives our residents the opportunity to offer primary care to this vulnerable population in a community setting. Additionally, we have a weekly LGBTQ Clinic within our continuity clinic, where we’re proud to be able to offer services to patients in an affirming space. By the time of graduation, each resident in the LGBTQ track will be expected to have at least 20 transgender and nonbinary patients in their patient panel.

One additional area that we are expanding is HIV care. All of our residents get ample training in prescribing pre-exposure prophylaxis against HIV (PrEP), but LGBTQ track residents will receive additional training in HIV diagnosis and treatment of low-risk cases. The goal is to have residents be AAHIVM-certified by graduation in order to gain competence and confidence in caring for patients living with HIV.

After completing this track, residents should feel prepared to provide acute and primary care for LGBTQ patients, and to have a nuanced understanding of LGBTQ status as a social determinant of health.

On completion of the curriculum in this Area of Concentration, each resident should be able to:

  • Provide culturally- and medically-competent primary care of LGBTQ patients
  • Understand the different health care needs of LGBTQ patients
  • Identify key health disparities and barriers to care impacting the health of LGBTQ patients, and design and implement targeted interventions aimed at health equity
  • Initiate, titrate, and troubleshoot gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy in transgender patients
  • Understand the basics of the most common types of gender-affirming surgery (mammoplasty, phalloplasty, metoidoplasty, vaginoplasty) and the after-care for each
  • Know how to initiate treatment for HIV and know when referral is necessary
  • Know the most common STDs in the LGBTQ population, as well as how to diagnose and treat these diseases
  • Teach medical students and other residents about the most essential topics in LGBTQ medicine