There’s nothing new about the RMA Network’s commitment to supporting LGBTQ+ community members. We’ve created hundreds of LGBTQ+ families, stand in partnership with LGBTQ+ organizations, and support our patients and team from the LGBTQ+ community. Our expertise on LGBTQ+ fertility drives us to continually improve our professional education on the subject. We know that new information on supporting our LGBTQ+ patients emerges each year. No fertility center can assume that training from five years ago will suffice; we’re committed to ongoing education for everyone on our team.

That’s why the RMA Network recently completed our first LGBTQ+ competency training for 2022. Transgender parent and educator Trystan Reese facilitated a workshop for over 100 RMA employees across the country, designed to ensure that every prospective patient who walks through our doors knows how fully understood, supported, and welcomed when they are with us.

Our team learned the most up-to-date information on shifts in language and identity within the LGBTQ+ community and what new family-building barriers have emerged since the COVID-19 pandemic. The training covered The Williams Institute’s data showing that LGBTQ+ Americans have been more likely to lose their jobs due to the pandemic, which has profoundly impacted the ability of many community members to pursue family-building activities.

While these stories aren’t new, the RMA team heard stories about common incidents of unintentional bias in fertility spaces, such as providers making assumptions about the gender of patients’ partners (or assuming that a patient’s wife is her sister). As RMA continues to diversify our team make-up, employees also had the opportunity to practice acts of allyship with each other– ensuring that our LGBTQ+ team members feel validated and safe in the workplace.

Concentric circles of inclusion:

  • LGBTQ+ inclusion is core to the RMA mission, so how employees experience the workplace is vital to living our values. We have created a culture where offices support each other (and hold each other accountable) by using respectful, accurate language when referring to each other.
  • Next, we updated our electronic medical records with personal pronouns and chosen names that are easy to document and use, which reduces the likelihood of any patient being referred to incorrectly. We continue to audit all of our systems to ensure that they accurately reflect the communities we serve and, whenever possible, use our collective power to apply pressure to outside vendors whose systems we use. Hence, every aspect of the patient experience is respectful.
  • Our teams are dedicated to treating each patient with the highest level of cultural competence, investing in education around implicit bias and active allyship, so patients with marginalized identities are met with kindness and support.
  • RMA’s affiliate egg donation program, Ovatures, spread the word about how LGBTQ+ families can grow through egg donation.
  • RMA has been recognized as a “Leader in LGBTQ Healthcare Equality” in the Healthcare Equality Index since 2013 for our commitment to equitable, inclusive care for LGBTQ+ patients and their families, who can face significant challenges in securing adequate healthcare.
  • RMA has been elected as an “Open Door” fertility clinic, a designation available to fertility clinics that have undergone LGBTQ+ sensitivity and inclusion training. Any clinic with the designation is deemed a safe space where members of the LGBTQ+ community can get the professional care they deserve in a welcoming, compassionate environment.
  • Finally, we stay committed to impacting LGBTQ+ communities in positive ways. From the patient experience to the families we help create, the RMA Network believes in closing the gaps that prevent LGBTQ+ community members from achieving full equality. RMA has supported many vital community organizations over the years, standing in solidarity with our patients and their families.