In B.C. it has been essential to undergo policy, service planning and educational resource development work by including, consulting and directly collaborating with those who have trans lived experience. This includes youth, adults, parents, caregivers, indigenous trans and two-spirit communities. There are many other populations within trans communities who require dedicated planning and resources. These are refugees and newcomers, those living with disabilities, neurodiverse people and other who face increased barriers to care because of their unique intersecting identities and the social locations they experience. Understanding the diverse care journeys of trans individuals has been essential to our work as we address the most significant health disparities and inequities.
Through steering committees, focus groups, advisory committees, surveys and research projects, we've found multiple ways to engage and include a range of stakeholders in codesigning the work. By involving those with local lived experience, we've been able to attune our action plans as much as possible to the needs that are being identified. We recommend that work undertaken to improve trans health in any jurisdiction should involve those impacted directly, including trans individuals and their loved ones with diverse lived experience. Families and loved ones bring critical information to the planning process, as do care providers, in a networked approach to planning and implementation.
For the rest of our presentation, we'd like to highlight issues on access to care. There's much data to show that transpeople in Canada experience barriers to basic services. By this we mean general health care, employment, education, housing and so on. Providing name and gender marker changes without special requirements, inviting self-identification of gender and pronouns, removing gender markers from government identification, providing gender-affirming care to individuals who are incarcerated and adding gender identity and expression to human rights codes can improve service accessibility. Many trans Canadians are benefiting from such policy changes; however, inequities still persist due to differences in provincial and territorial laws and inconsistencies in policy application.
Broad work is required to review trans inclusion and cultural safety factors related to all levels of government and public services. There are many groups doing this work on limited funding and support. Our program has been developing free online learning modules to begin to help address the education needs connected to this work. We acknowledge that this is just a beginning step and specific to B.C. We recommend that appropriate funding be allocated to the public system to support needs assessment, cultural safety education and actions to improve accessibility.