This week’s episode includes oral histories related to healthcare access and the transgender experience with project partners from the Institute for Personal Growth and the Babs Siperstein PROUD Center at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.

Margaret Nichols, Ph.D., founder of Institute for Personal Growth shares some of the rocky history of transgender healthcare in the United States, and how bad medical research from the 1970s has persisted in impacting healthcare access into the present day.

Nicole Brownstein, lead support group facilitator at the Babs Siperstein PROUD Center at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and Visiting Nurses Association in Asbury Park speaks with us about Governor Phil Murphy’s executive order to indefinitely restrict all non-essential medical procedures through the pandemic, and as a result how the health of some members of the transgender community may be at risk.

Oral histories featured on this episode include Mariah and PJ from the Trueselves oral history and documentary theater project regarding their own medical experiences.

John Keller and Dan Swern do a weekly deep dive into the coLAB Arts oral history archive and look at how those experiences inform understanding of the present moment. Stories span issues that include economic vulnerability, gender diversity, community development, and criminal justice reform.