It is with a heavy heart we have to announce that Harbor Health Clinic will remain closed for the foreseeable future and at this time we have to recommend individuals pursue their gender affirming hormone therapy at another organization. While we care deeply for both our patients and the community support we have received since we opened in 2018, the pandemic has dramatically impacted both our financial infrastructure and ability to find competent providers in this chaotic time.
We have been spending the last several months pursuing funding and interviewing positions for the clinic. While we have had promising leads, we kept waiting for definitive information before making promises. We wanted to wait for something concrete to announce, which turned from weeks, to months, to now half a year. Looking forward there is still opportunity and potential to offer services again, but
given the uncertainty of our current landscape we do not want anyone to depend on this possibility.
We originally created Harbor Health Clinic to address the lack of access to hormone therapy, informed consent hormone therapy, and affordability of hormone therapy. When we started we were the only provider doing all of these in at least 150 miles. We now have places like Planned Parenthood and Canopy Medical Clinic. We have clinics offering this throughout ND, MN, and SD. A great deal of what we started to address is now being handled. While we are no longer able to offer services, we take heart in knowing that we bridged a needed gap for two years and started people on accessible lifesaving treatment until the rest of the medical world started to catch up and provide more options.
While we don’t have the infrastructure to maintain a clinic, we are going to shift our focus to improving the infrastructure that already exists by encouraging more providers to include hormone therapy as part of routine care. We will still be here as advocates for trans healthcare throughout our tristate area. We will still be here to provide resources and help connect the trans community to services they need. We will be rebranding ourselves as the Harbor Health Initiative at the start of next year and we will continue to serve the trans, non-binary, and gender diverse folks of this region.
Thank you to everyone who made this clinic a reality. Please rest assured that I will always be fighting for you and for better healthcare and access for the trans community.
Faye Seidler