SAMPLE PERSONAL STATEMENT / CAREER GOALS (KL2 POST-DOCTORAL AWARD)

Personal/Career Development Statement

Five years ago, I had the incredible fortune of beginning my clinical career in the care of transgender adolescents.
Over the past two years, I have expanded my clinic to meet the pediatric needs of children who are gender nonconforming. During my work as a clinician for this very interesting and vulnerable population, I have come to
recognize the remarkable lack of scientific data in the area of transgender medicine, resulting in a desperately
underserved population. There is even less research about transgender and gender non-conforming youth. It is this
realization that has driven my enthusiasm to pursue a career in research, specifically in the area of gender nonconforming and transgender youth.
Gender non-conformity is not new to the human experience. Nearly every other culture around the globe describes a
sub-population of individuals whose internal gender identity differs from that which their genitalia dictate. In Western
cultures this phenomenon has been interpreted as a mental illness, resulting in ineffective and often damaging
interventions. The medical community has known for decades how to help people achieve a phenotype that more
closely resembles their internal gender identity; estrogen for those who desire female secondary sexual characteristics,
testosterone for those who desire male secondary sexual characteristics. Despite this knowledge and practice, we have
not taken a scientific approach to understanding the trajectory of gender non-conformity from childhood into
adulthood outside of the psychopathological paradigm. What we do know from the small amount of research about
transgender youth is that if unrecognized and untreated they are at very high risk for isolation, depression, anxiety,
bullying, harassment, high-risk sexual and drug behavior and suicide. As the media focuses increasing attention on
gender non-conforming and transgender children and adolescents, our scientific understanding must keep pace in order
provide care for these young people. Over the course of my research career in the next five years, I intend to examine
the trajectory f gender non-conforming children, adolescents and young adults. I would like to investigate
interventions currently available, and inform the most efficacious standards of care. Additionally, it is important to
discover mechanisms to identify those children who will persist in their gender non-conformity into adolescence. We
need to submit our current protocols for transgender youth to rigorous scientific scrutiny in order to demonstrate that
they are necessary medical interventions for this population.
In 2010 I was awarded the Clinical Research Academic Career Development Award (CRACDA) from the Saban
Research Institute. For the past 18 months I have been working on the first of a series of research endeavors that
specifically aims to understand the physiologic and psychosocial impact of a multidisciplinary treatment protocol that
includes cross sex hormones on transgender youth. The participants in this initial study are those youth who desire a
phenotypic transition to bring their physical bodies into better alignment with their internal gender identities. I have
successfully recruited 50 participants into this study in the past 10 months. Additionally, my second protocol
examining the effect of puberty suppression in younger gender non-conforming youth has been submitted and
approved by the Institutional Review Board at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and will be ready for enrollment in
January of 2012. Over the course of my CRACDA award, my desire to develop increasingly improved research skills
has grown, and has solidified my interest in becoming independently funded, outstanding clinical translational
researcher. I can think of no better arena in which translational research is so necessary to improve the lives of youth
and their families.
This KL2 award will not only provide the necessary protection of my time in order to move forward with my second
study examining the effects of hormone blockers on peri-pubertal transgender youth, but will provide a host of skills
that are necessary for me to become a better research scientist. I have completed the first in a series of courses at USC
required to obtain a Masters Degree in Clinical and Biological Investigations. I plan to continue coursework over the
next 2 to 3 years, culminating in the 6 month directed research PM590 course. I can already appreciate the impact of
this initial introductory biostatistics class on my ability to conceptualize my research in the design and analysis phases.
I anticipate that along with the Clinical Translational Research courses required of KL2 recipients, I will be able to
more confidently conduct research that is internationally relevant.
Should I receive the KL2, I will continue to pursue funding via the K23 award, and eventually to an R01. These initial
studies that I will be conducting during the course of my training grants will provide me with pilot data that is uniquely
suited to developing larger scale trials. Over time, I anticipate expanding my research into multi-center trials in order
to develop the first national cohort of transgender youth in the United States.