The Spanish translation of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health's Standards of Care: Introduction

Abstract

Over the last couple of years, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care (SOC) have been translated from English into other languages (Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, and Spanish). These translations were completed following the publication of Version 7 of the SOC and are available on the WPATH website (Coleman et al., 2011). The Chinese and Spanish translations of the WPATH SOC were among the first languages to be completed. The original English version limited the worldwide dissemination and application of the SOC. Thus, these translations (now numbering 15) are an important tool to promote transgender health in many areas of the world. While the Chinese translation is terribly important because of the size of the Chinese speaking world, the Spanish translation published in this issue of the International Journal of Transgenderism is equally important. It has been estimated that there are 427 million Spanish speaking people in the world, with Mexico having the largest Spanish speaking population followed by the United States and Spain (Simons, 2017). By 2050, the United States is estimated to have the world’s largest Spanish speaking population (Instituto Cervantes, 2016). Latin America has the largest number of countries that speak Spanish and have it as their official language (Simons, 2017). In addition to the size of the population and given the current environment and rapid changes occurring in Spanish speaking countries, this translation has the potential of scaling up transgender health care in an exponential manner. While professional transgender health care workers are reasonably well organized in the United States and Europe (including Spain), they are not as well organized in Latin America. WPATH has only a handful of members from Spain or Latin America. It is understandable that there are not many members from Latin America as WPATH holds its biennial conferences in English without any simultaneous translation and has never held one of its conferences in a Spanish speaking country (however, WPATH will hold its next conference in Argentina in 2018). Regional affiliates of WPATH have formed in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States, and most recently in Brazil. Unfortunately, there is not a Spanish speaking professional organization devoted to transgender health to provide a network of professionals working in this field, to develop professional skills, or to advocate for transgender health care. As a result, many professionals providing gender related care are probably not very familiar with the WPATH Standards of Care. There are however, a number of Latin American activist organizations that have fought effectively for transgender rights, including the right to health care (see Table 1 for a list of some of the major organizations). Trans activist organizations have been more effective in organizing themselves than professionals working in the field. The HIV epidemic has disproportionally impacted the trans community and has had a positive impact on community activism and connection with gay men’s organizations, international cooperation agencies, and health services, and consequently fostered powerful trans activist organizations (Serrano-Amaya & da Costa Santos, 2016). Trans activism in Latin America has focused on legal rights essential for health and wellbeing. There are certainly advances in access to health