LGBTQ+ Veteran care
VA North Texas employees receive training in clinical care that is responsive to the unique needs of LGBTQ+ Veterans. Our trained LGBTQ+ Veteran care coordinator is fully equipped to support the health, welfare, and dignity of you and your family.
Connect with our LGBTQ+ Veteran care coordinator
Christopher Holland-Deguire, PsyD
LGBTQ+ Veteran care coordinator, staff psychologist
VA North Texas health care
Phone: 214-857-0534
Care we provide at VA North Texas
Our LGBTQ+ Veteran care coordinators can answer your questions, advocate for your right to quality care, handle complaints or concerns you have about your care, and help you get started with any of our services for LGBTQ+ Veterans. These include:
- Mental health services, including psychosocial assessments for hormone therapy and gender confirming surgeries
- Creative arts therapies
- Hormone therapy
- Gender-affirming prosthetics
- Testing, counseling, and care for HIV and sexually transmitted infections, counseling, and care, including post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for Veterans at risk for HIV
- Other prevention, screening, wellness, and testing services
Policies and practices to know
The care coordinator can help you get started with care or with navigating any of these issues.
Visitation: A same-sex partner, family member, friend, or other individual can be present with the patient for emotional support during the course of the patient's stay.
Definition of family: "Family" may include individual(s) not legally related to the individual. Family members include spouses, domestic partners, different-sex and same-sex significant others.
Advance directives: Veterans may designate any person as a decision-maker for care if they won't be able to make these decisions themselves. This includes same-sex partners. Advance directive agents are chosen by the Veteran and do not need to be biologically related.
Documentation in medical records: VA North Texas maintains the confidentiality of information about sexual orientation, sexual behavior, and gender identity, just like any other private health information.
Changing name or sex in records: Your name in your medical record will reflect your legal name. The sex in your medical record should reflect your self-identified gender. You have the right to request that your name and sex are updated as appropriate. There are established procedures for changing your name and sex with the VA Privacy Officer.
VA North Texas LGBTQ+ safe space provider directory
Our LGBTQ+ Veteran care coordinators can answer your questions, advocate for your right to quality care, handle complaints or concerns you have about your care, and help you get started with any of our services for LGBTQ+ Veterans.
VA North Texas has received the designation of “LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality Top Performer” in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 15th-anniversary edition of the Healthcare Equality Index (HEI), the nation’s foremost benchmarking survey of healthcare facilities on policies and practices dedicated to the equitable treatment and inclusion of their LGBTQ+ patients, visitors and employees.
This designation is the highest possible score a VHA facility can get as we do not currently have access to gender-affirming surgical procedures within VHA facilities across the country.
This accomplishment places VA North Texas as one of two LGBTQ+ HEI Top Performers in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, as well as one of two VHA facilities within VISN 17 to hold this status.