THE OSLO INTERNATIONAL TRANS HEALTH CONFERENCE
9.-10. OKTOBER 2025
For all professionals, trans, non-binary and gender diverse people and allies
Conference programme
DAY 1
8:30-9:00 Opening doors and registration
9:00-9:15 Official opening
SESSION 1
9:15-10:00 Ayden Scheim
Access to gender affirmation for trans and gender diverse people: Intersectional and global perspectives
10:00-10:45 Ketil Slagstad
Trans History, Sterilization, and the Scandinavian Welfare State
10:45-11:00 Coffee break
SESSION 2
11:00-11:45 Lene Løvdal
The limits of paternalism. Human rights perspectives on healthcare.
11:45-12:30 Cal Horton
Upholding trans children's rights against a backdrop of pathologisation and state violence
12:30-13:30 Lunch
SESSION 3
13:30-14:15 Isak L. Jacobsen
Between Medicalization and Lived Experience – Transmasculine Experiences of Seeking Reproductive Health Care (link)
14:15-15:00 Anniken Sørlie
Norway's Past Sterilization Requirement: Legal and Ethical Reflections in a European Framework
15:00-15:30 Kristopher Salvesen
From Panic to Proportion: Debunking Misleading Claims About Trans Referral Surges in Norway (link)
EVENING SOCIAL EVENT
18:00 Conference dinner
Dinner is open to buy as an add-on for all participants as part of the registratin for the conference.
DAY 2
9:00 - 9:15 Opening doors
SESSION 4
9:15-10:00 Rosa Almirall
Trans-Affirmative Health Services: Navigating Today, Shaping Tomorrow
10:00-10:45 Stephen Rosenthal
Advances & Challenges in the Care of Transgender/ Gender Diverse Youth: An Evolving Landscape
10:45-11:00 Coffee break
SESSION 5
11:00-11:45 Simona Giordano
Ethical issues in paediatric gender medicine
11:45-12:30 Natacha Kennedy
The Implications of the UK Puberty-Blocker ban
12:30-13:30 Lunch
SESSION 6
13:30-14:15 Ole-Petter Hamnvik
Guideline congruence in gender incongruence - providing high-quality gender-affirming hormone therapy to adults
14:15-15:00 Aleksander Sørlie and Ole Martin Moen
Moral courage in health care
15:00-15:30 Panel discussion
From Guidelines to Lived Realities: Implementing Trans-Affirming Care
15:30-15:45 Closing remarks
ABSTRACTS
Ketil Slagstad
Trans History, Sterilization, and the Scandinavian Welfare State
In response to the increased visibility of trans and non-binary people and their demands for recognition, politicians, activists, researchers, and health professionals have mobilized the language of epidemics and the metaphor of social contagion to restrict trans rights and access to medical transition. In these discussions, social media is often portrayed as a “vehicle of transmission” of trans identity. However, as this lecture argues, this argument has followed transgender medicine from the beginning. Taking the politicization of trans medicine today as its starting point, this lecture asks what we can learn from history. Since the emergence of trans medicine in 1920s Europe, a major goal of physicians and the state has been to restrict access to medical treatment to shape and change sex – what is referred today as gender-affirming treatment. Highlighting the conflicting roles of medicine and state bureaucracy in regulating sex and protecting the sex binary provides a deeper understanding of the normative underpinnings of social medicine. Specifically, the lecture focuses on the role of the Scandinavian sterilization and castration laws, their eugenic underpinnings, and medical regimes of standardizing sex.
Ketil Slagstad (he/him), MD PhD, is a researcher at the Institute of the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine, Charité Berlin and the author of the forthcoming “Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine” published by the University of Chicago Press.
Simona Giordano
Ethical issues in paediatric gender medicine
At least since 2020, when the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published two reports on gender affirming hormones and puberty blockers, the evidence in support of hormonal treatment for transgender and gender diverse youth (TGDY) has been disputed. The Cass Review consolidated the claim that evidence in support of such care is 'remarkably low'. One response to this claim has been to restrict access to paediatric gender medicine; another has been to deny that the evidence is low; another has been to admit that it is and instigate further studies. In this paper I draw on the works of now classic philosophers of science, particularly Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend, to understand what is really happening. Are the debates truly about 'evidence'? What is evidence? Why does it matter? How do we procure it? More broadly, how does medical science progresses? Through the readings of their works, I will suggest that what is being disputed, in our case, is not the empirical data that result from clinical studies: what is being disputed is something else, more profound. Ultimately the question 'do we have sufficient evidence?' is a moral question, not primarily a clinical question: it is a judgment call. As the dispute is not about data, but about different worldviews, and different value systems, I will suggest that more studies, more data, more research, is unlikely to pacify the polarisation in this area of care.
Natacha Kennedy
The Implications of the UK Puberty-Blocker ban
The consequences of the UK government’s puberty-blocker ban and implementation of other policies associated with the Cass Review are addressed in this presentation, the methodological and ethical basis for which differs significantly and fundamentally from that of Cass and similar processes. The Cass Review, despite itself not being peer-reviewed and having been critiqued by at least eleven peer-reviewed publications, is still regularly deployed by governments, the (medical) establishment, the media and transphobic groups as a justification strategy for implementing policies that harm (young) trans people. This – in and of itself – is significant. This presentation examines not merely the specific effects of the puberty-blocker ban but the wider implications, from the methodological and ethical to the political and cultural, of the way Cass and similar measures have been deployed as pretexts for implementing policies harmful to trans people. So the harm deliberately caused to young trans people is analysed and situated in a wider context, drawing on the work of Weber to analyse it as part of a structural process designed to affect all trans healthcare and human rights and probably the rights of other groups, especially the marginalised and minoritised. Trans healthcare, especially that of young trans people needs to be regarded as having been politicised by cis-supremacists and the far right to the extent that those working in this area need to take account of this opposition, as a core part of their work.
Kristopher Salvesen
From Panic to Proportion: Debunking Misleading Claims About Trans Referral Surges in Norway (link)
Discussions about rising referral numbers for gender-affirming care among trans youth often rely on pathologizing framings, vague growth metaphors, or decontextualized statistics. This presentation challenges such narratives by offering a critical statistical analysis of referral data from the only two clinics in Norway providing gender-affirming care to children and adolescents: the National Center for Gender Incongruence (NCGI) and the Oslo Health Clinic for Gender and Sexuality (HCGS).
We present a simulation-based framework for comparing observed referral counts to expected values based on birth cohort sizes and plausible estimates of transgender population proportions. Our findings show that referral rates remain well below international estimates of gender diversity, even during peak years, and that claims of “explosive growth” are mathematically unfounded. We also apply change point detection techniques to identify structural shifts in referral patterns, highlighting the influence of sociopolitical events such as the 2016 Gender Recognition Act and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Beyond technical analysis, we critically engage with the ethical and political dimensions of interpreting trans health data. We argue that statistical deviation from expected values—whether above or below—cannot in itself justify moral concern or restrictive policy. Trans people’s existence is not a statistical error. Ethical public health must begin from rights-based principles, not demographic conformity.
We also reflect on the importance of using non-pathologizing language and statistical modelling and of incorporating sociopolitical contexts into demographic analyses. This work offers a transferable methodology for interpreting trans health statistics responsibly and will be of interest to researchers, clinicians, and advocates seeking better ways to analyze and communicate data on trans youth.
Isak L. Jacobsen
Between Medicalization and Lived Experience – Transmasculine Experiences of Seeking Reproductive Health Care (link)
The removal of sterilization and castration requirements following the adoption of the Gender Recognition Act in 2016 marked a turning point in the reproductive health rights for transgender people in Norway. Despite this, legal barriers to full reproductive rights persists. In addition, accessing reproductive health care is arguably a gendered experience, considering the hetero- and cisnormativity underpinnings of many reproductive health care spaces such as gynecological care, antenatal care, assisted reproductive technology to name a few. This lecture draws on in-depth interviews centering the experiences of transmasculine individuals in Norway accessing reproductive health care. The lecture will particularly focus on assumptions and experiences with health care professionals that serve as barriers to trans-inclusive reproductive healthcare, and highlights the necessity to challenge cisnormative imaginaries of the reproductive body.
Isak Løberg Jacobsen (he/they) is a Ph.D.-Candidate at the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture (NTNU), currently working on the doctoral project "(Un)Reproductive bodies? Transmasculinity and reproductive choices in Norway" (2023-2027).
Stephen Rosenthal
Advances & Challenges in the Care of Transgender/ Gender Diverse Youth: An Evolving Landscape
An increasing number of transgender and gender diverse (TGD) adolescents are seeking hormonal treatments to facilitate the development of physical characteristics in alignment with their gender identity. Such services, including use of gonadotropin releasing hormone agonists (GnRHa) to reversibly block progression of endogenous puberty and subsequent gender-affirming sex hormone treatment are based on longitudinal research. Studies demonstrate that individuals who were first identified as having gender dysphoria in early or middle childhood and continue to meet the mental health criteria for gender dysphoria at early puberty are likely to have persistent gender incongruence into adulthood. This presentation will review scientific evidence that supports biological underpinnings to gender identity development, and mental health and physiologic outcomes of current treatment models in TGD adolescents. Research demonstrates that gender-affirming medical care appears to improve mental health outcomes in short- and medium-term studies, that bone mineral density appears to be maintained at pre-treatment levels in dose-response studies, and that fertility preservation may be possible even with use of GnRHa prior to menarche in adolescents designated female at birth. Further long-term safety and efficacy studies are necessary to optimize care for TGD youth. Finally, this presentation will review the evolving political landscape and its impact on research and care.
Cal Horton
Upholding trans children's rights against a backdrop of pathologisation and state violence
In the UK trans youth healthcare has moved swiftly in the wrong direction over the past few years. From a service deeply embedded in pathologisation, coercion and harm, to a service committed to conversive practices, with widespread denial of social, legal or medical affirmation. The pressures driving this shift are being seen across Europe, with other countries adopting defensive, pathologising or harmful approaches. This session provides an overview of this phenomenon, highlighting key triggers and shifts in policy and practice, discussing their impacts on trans children and young people, and drawing out lessons for healthcare practitioners and advocates across Europe and beyond.
Anniken Sørlie
Norway's Past Sterilization Requirement: Legal and Ethical Reflections in a European Framework
Before 2016, surgical removal of reproductive organs (hereafter irreversible sterilization) was a requirement for changing legal gender in Norway. This requirement was not explicitly regulated by Norwegian law but followed from longstanding administrative practice. This presentation examines this former Norwegian administrative practice, its rationale, and how sterilization requirements have, over time, been assessed in light of human rights, particularly the European Convention on Human Rights. The presentation draws parallels to the regulation and justification of sterilization requirements, as well as their subsequent repeal, in other countries. One question posed is what the prevailing justifications for the requirement were. Furthermore, it considers whether the repeal of the sterilization requirement and the reasons behind it represent a genuine break with previous practices regarding the change of legal gender and whether it has led to reproductive freedom for transpeople living in Norway.
Rosa Almirall
Trans-Affirmative Health Services: Navigating Today, Shaping Tomorrow
In 1979, the first Standards of Care for people experiencing gender dysphoria were introduced. Since then, social and legal transformations have reshaped the field of transgender healthcare, gradually shifting from restrictive “gatekeeper” models toward trans-affirmative approaches that prioritize autonomy and individualized care.
Yet these advances have also triggered a wave of anti-trans policies, revealing the fragility of progress and the need for sustained collective action. In recent years, some countries have begun to impose restrictions, directly challenging trans-affirmative models of care. In this climate, both the community and healthcare providers are called to develop strategies to resist these setbacks and safeguard the progress achieved.
Moving forward, it is crucial to strengthen principles of good practice in transgender healthcare, to counter misinformation without succumbing to provocation, and to reinforce arguments in favor of person-centered approaches that respect autonomy in decision-making. Equally important is the development of robust research and clinical protocols that expand the evidence base, along with training initiatives for key actors such as policymakers, judicial systems, and scientific associations. Building alliances with human rights organizations and creating networks of professionals, community members, and allies are also essential steps to defend the right to quality care.
Ultimately, while the future remains uncertain, it is important to maintain a balanced outlook: rejecting naïve optimism but also avoiding catastrophic perspectives. By honoring past struggles, learning from victories, and committing to concrete actions in the present, it is possible to imagine and shape a future where trans and non-binary people have full access to respectful, affirming, and autonomous healthcare.
Lene Løvdal
The limits of paternalism. Human rights perspectives on healthcare
How does human rights law define health, and what are the state’s duties ? What are the consequences of the right to self-determination and respect for identity personal integrity when it comes to healthcare for minors with gender incongruence? Non-discrimination is a core principle of human rights law. What is discrimination when it comes to health care for persons with gender incongruence? And how do these aspects of human rights law together create a framework for what is sound medical practice for healthcare for minors with gender incongruence?
In a report co-written with dr. med in endocrinology and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, Ole-Petter Riksfjord Hamnvik in 2024, Lene Løvdal explored the intersection between medical science, human rights law and Norwegian health law regarding minors with gender incongruence. In this presentation she will share their main findings.
Programme and abstracts