Lyle Yaphockun

Yap, who attended NYU and volunteered during his undergraduate years at Asian-Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV & AIDS Community Health Center and Center for HIV Educational Studies and Training, said that he found out about the internship while searching for an internship dealing with LGBTI health.

“I want to specialize in helping the LGBTI population and this was one of the few internships available that has a department dedicated to LGBTI health,” he explained.

The Program for LGBTI Health is a research center that doubles as a call center for LGBTI patients looking for specialist as well as an LGBTI educational organization. The program is directed by Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld, chair-elect of the American Medical Association Board of Trustees.

Together with five other medical students, Yap did groundbreaking research on providing better treatment for transgender individuals.

When an individual undergoes hormonal therapy, a woman receiving hormones post menopause or a child receiving growth hormones, clinicians use a baseline from their gender to check for various health issues and complications. However, no health baseline exists for transgender individuals.

“There is no normal reference for transgender individuals,” said Yap. “Some clinicians use male reference ranges, others use female and still others use the average of the two. We suspect that’s not the correct way to go about it. We might miss early signs of cancer or liver disease.”

Yap and a colleague are performing a meta-analysis on the data of more than 600 transgender patients to develop a normal reference range for a variety of body measurements for transgender individuals.

VUMC is also opening The Gender Clinic, one of the few clinics primarily dedicated to individuals with gender dysmorphia. Together with another colleague, Yap hopes to collect enough primary data from the center to publish a second article about the ranges they’ve discovered through their own patients.  

Yap said that his internship tied into the reasons he chose to become a doctor.

“Among my friends who identify as gay or non-binary or transgender—they’re not a lot of us in medicine and there are even fewer advocates in medicine. That really needs to change,” he said. “I’ve been given this rare opportunity to go to medical school and I can’t waste it on getting a residency to have a six-figure salary. I can’t waste this privilege on myself. I have a responsibility to help those in my community who are less fortunate.”