The mission of the Harbor Health Initiative is to dramatically improve trans-inclusive cultural competency and a list of offered services throughout the state of North Dakota.

The Harbor Health Initiative (HHI) seeks to better the healthcare infrastructure by advocating for trans-inclusive health services and cultural competency training.

In 2018, we created a clinic called Harbor Health Clinic to address the gap in healthcare transgender individuals experience. The Main areas of focus for this clinic was to increase access to hormone therapy by using both an informed consent model and providing a sliding fee scale payment options for lower income trans folks. When we opened our doors we were the only clinic in 150 miles providing either informed consent or sliding fee scale services. We provided this service between 2018 and 2020, treating over 200 transgender individuals in the tri-state area.

The global pandemic of 2020, however, stop our ability to continue hosting this clinic. As we struggled to find ways to continue offering this service, we looked around into where our efforts would be the most beneficial.

Since our opening in 2018, we’ve had a number of other healthcare organizations start to provide both informed consent treatment and sliding fee scale opportunities. The goals we set out to accomplish with our clinic were starting to be met by the healthcare community at large. Given the instability caused by the pandemic and our original goals being met, we determined our efforts would be better suited to working with healthcare organizations across North Dakota to improve the infrastructure that already exists. In this regard, we set out to encourage more provides to start offering hormone therapy as part of standard care, for pediatricians to start screening for gender identity, and for all doctors to be better trained in LGBTQ+ Cultural Competency.

The Harbor Health Initiative is an initiative to dramatically improve cultural competency and offered services throughout the state.

The COIVD-19 pandemic stopped our ability to host this clinic in 2020. We determined our efforts were better suited to working with healthcare organizations across North Dakota to improve the infrastructure. We set out to encourage more providers to offer hormone therapy as part of standard care, for pediatricians to start screening for gender identity, and for all doctors to be better trained in LGBTQ+ cultural competency.

In 2022 after regaining stability, the clinic was reformed under the new name: The Harbor Health Initiative.