The Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (Patha) recently published in The New Zealand Medical Journal its vision for appropriate gender-affirming care.
Patha president Dr Jaimie Veale said it incorporated a physical location for the hub as well as an online virtual resource.
"A national transgender health resourcing hub will provide a place where healthcare providers from throughout the country can access resources, education and support to be able to provide this medically necessary care."
The pathologisation of transgender people in the past meant many in the transgender community had negative perceptions of the healthcare system.
But with the current healthcare reforms and the creation of Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand there was an opportunity to provide national co-ordination of primary healthcare and gender-affirming surgery.
"Having something something visible from within Te Whatu Ora, within the healthcare system, there could be some real advantages of doing it that way."
At present it was "a real postcode lottery" in terms of gender-affirming healthcare.
"At the moment, a young transgender person living in a smaller place such as Cromwell, might have to choose whether they can live with their family or be forced to move to a bigger city like Dunedin to be able to access gender-affirming hormone therapy.
"A key goal of this vision document is for people to be able to access as much gender-affirming healthcare as close to where they live as possible."
When people were accessing hormones for gender transitions for the first time in some regions they might have to see an endocrinologist, and in other regions they might visit a sexual health service.
In Canterbury however there had been a strong initiative to ensure much of this would happen within primary healthcare services.
"And that is really aligned with the model that we are promoting," she said.
University of Otago health science researcher and Patha committee member Cassie Withey-Rila said something that had been common in transgender health research was the disparities in different regions of the country about what sort of services were or were not provided.
The national co-ordination of healthcare under Te Whatu Ora might in the future help with this, they said.
"Currently we’re still seeing very different ways of engaging with trans healthcare in different regions.
"Here in Otago, we can only go up, there are so many opportunities for improvements to be made."
It was proposed the creation of the hub would be led by a steering group of transgender community leaders.
The best examples of healthcare methods in different regions could be adopted across the whole country, helping simplify the process for the transgender community, they said.
