Here are four things to know.
1. The health system plans to formally open a transgender health service this summer and resume gender-reassignment surgeries, reports The Washington Post.
2. Johns Hopkins Medicine has not performed gender-reassignment surgeries since 1979, when it closed its gender-identity clinic, according to the report.
3. Psychiatrist Paul McHugh, MD, former chief of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital, played a key role in that decision. Around the time Johns Hopkins Medicine decided to close the clinic, Jon Meyer, who ran the organization’s Sexual Behaviors Consultation Unit, did a study that concluded the gender-reassignment surgeries provided patients with “no objective advantage in terms of social rehabilitation,” reports The Washington Post.
“With these facts in hand,” Dr. McHugh later wrote, “I concluded that Hopkins was fundamentally cooperating with a mental illness.”
4. In a letter dated Oct. 7, 2016, the health system said it “highly values and is fully committed to supporting LGBT individuals.” As part of that commitment, it said it “will soon begin providing gender-affirming surgery as another important element of our overall care program, reflecting careful consideration over the past year of best practices and the appropriate provision of care for transgender individuals.”
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