The Sylvia Rivera Law Project, together with several other legal and medical organizations and individuals, including the TGI Justice Project, Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Lori Kohler of the Correctional Medicine Consultation Network, worked closely with the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC) to support the adoption of an official position statement on transgender health care for people in detention.  In late 2009, NCCHC officially adopted a position statement that advocates a common sense, individualized approach to the health care needs of transgender people in detention.  The statement opposes the type of policy that is all too common in prison systems today banning hormone therapy for anyone who does not have a record of a prescription before detention. NCCHC is an organization that provides accreditation, technical assistance, and education resources to improve the provision of health care in prisons, jails, and juvenile detention facilities.  It is our hope that this position statement will cause systems of detention to rethink their policies and to allow health care decisions to be made based on need, not prejudice.

Click here to read the statement on the Web site of NCCHC.