Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery Appoints New Executive Director
Joshua Safer, MD, an internationally renowned clinical endocrinologist and authority on transgender medicine, has joined the Mount Sinai Health System as Executive Director of the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery (CTMS). The CTMS is the first and only center in New York—and one of a few pioneers nationwide—to provide transgender patients with a comprehensive and integrated system of care.
Dr. Safer, the Center’s first executive director, will also serve as a senior faculty member at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
“We are very excited about Dr. Safer joining the CTMS,” said David Reich, MD, President and Chief Operating Officer of The Mount Sinai Hospital. “With his innovative approach and re-search experience, Dr. Safer will lead the center, which is one of the few comprehensive transgender medical and surgery centers in the nation, to extraordinary levels of clinical and re-search excellence.”
“There is a massive gap in transgender medical care that needs to be filled,” said Dr. Safer. “The Mount Sinai center will serve as a model of medical care delivery for transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. Mount Sinai’s position as a leading academic medical center will be leveraged to develop programs to train the next generation of physicians in transgender health care.”
In response to the growing need for treatment for transgender individuals, Mount Sinai launched the nation's first transgender surgery and psychiatric medical fellowships in 2017.
Little evidence-based data exist to guide transgender health care decisions. Dr. Safer’s arrival will provide the opportunity for Mount Sinai to establish scientific research iniatives to advance the field.
Dr. Safer was most recently the founding Medical Director of the Center for Transgender Medi-cine and Surgery at Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Safer earned his medical degree from the University of Wisconsin. He completed his internal medicine residency at Mount Sinai Beth Israel and his endocrinology fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Dr. Safer is the president of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health (USPATH) and the steering committee co-chair of the international transgender research consor-tium, TransNet. He also serves on the Global Education Initiative committee for the World Pro-fessional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), on the Standards of Care revision committee for WPATH, and as a scientific co-chair for WPATH’s international meeting. Dr. Safer was a co-author of the Endocrine Society guidelines for the medical care of transgender patients. In addition, he is a past president of the Association of Specialty Professors, the um-brella organization for leaders in internal medicine subspecialty education, and a former secre-tary-treasurer of the national endocrinology program director organization, the Association of Program Directors in Endocrinology and Metabolism (APDEM).
Dr. Safer’s research focus is on demonstrating the health and quality of life benefits of increased access to care for transgender patients. His current and past sources of funding support include the National Institutes of Health and a number of private foundations.
About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the nation’s leading integrated academic health systems and one of the largest in the New York metropolitan area. Its comprehensive system includes seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, over 600 research and clinical laboratories, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing. Together, the Health System comprises approximately 48,000 employees, more than 9,000 physicians, and 8,600 nurses.
As a leading learning health system, Mount Sinai combines clinical expertise with scientific discovery to improve patient care while training the next generation of health care and biomedical leaders. The Health System provides care across every stage of life, from prenatal care through geriatrics, while advancing personalized medicine through artificial intelligence, data science, and biomedical research.
Mount Sinai is consistently recognized among the nation’s leading academic health systems for patient care, research, and education. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 1 in New York by Newsweek and No. 5 on the magazine’s World’s Best Hospitals list. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai ranks No. 11 among U.S. medical schools and No. 1 among freestanding medical schools for National Institutes of Health funding, reflecting the strength of its scientific enterprise and leadership in biomedical research.
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