Interview with Jacsen Callanan

An interview with Jacsen Callanan, a white masculine trans health organizer and educator based in rural Vermont. At the time of this oral history interview, he was working in the NICU (newborn/neonatal intensive care unit) at the University of Vermont Medical Center while preparing for medical school, and as a swim coach for a youth team in northern Vermont. Prior to that work, Callanan spent seven years in various leadership positions at the Philadelphia Trans Health/Wellness Conference, and over a decade working as an educator and consultant to schools, health providers and systems, community organizations, and universities to improve climates and conditions for trans and gender nonconforming people. In this oral history interview, Callanan discusses his upbringing on the South Side of Chicago, his entry into organizing within a small trans community at the University of Vermont in the early 2000's, and his years of extensive work within the Philadelphia Trans Health and Wellness Conference. Specifically, he discusses the origins of the conference, its early work around diagnostic criteria, trying to expand medical access for trans and gender nonconforming people and trans competency among providers, divisions within its organizers, tensions as more cis providers began to attend, and its eventual subsumption under the nonprofit Mazzoni Center. Additionally, Callanan offers his thoughts on the lack of general trans competency in many medical fields, especially in emergency care, and his decision to enter medical school in part to remedy that lack.

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Item Information:

Identifier: qb98mf85j
Collection: Audio and Video Clips and Transcripts
Institution: Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection, University of Minnesota
Creator(s): Callanan, Jacsen
Contributor(s): Beam, Myrl
Billund-Phibbs, Myra
Brenner-Adam, Katherine
Publisher: University of Minnesota Minneapolis Libraries
Date Created: Mar. 16, 2021
Genre: Oral Histories
Transcriptions
Subject(s): Philadelphia Trans Health and Wellness Conference
Places: Vermont > Bennington County > Town of Bennington > Bennington
Illinois > Cook > Chicago > South Side
Topic(s): Educators
Gender non-conforming people
LGBTQ+ health education
LGBTQ+ youth
Transmasculine people
White transgender people
Resource Type: Moving image
Text
Language: English
Rights: Copyright undetermined
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