Establishing a National Research Network for a Multicentre Cohort Study on Gender Dysphoria: Addressing Current Knowledge Gaps

The global healthcare needs for people with gender dysphoria (GD) has surged, especially among individuals assigned female at birth and the youth population.

Numerous systematic reviews, including those by the SBU (Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services), have highlighted knowledge gaps regarding the efficacy and safety of current gender-affirming treatments.

The integrity of research on GD-related outcomes has been questioned by inadequate study designs and insufficient sample sizes.

There´s a pressing need for rigorous longitudinal studies.The primary objective of this project is to foster a multidisciplinary collaboration to draft a protocol for a national clinical cohort of individuals with GD, encompassing both historical and prospective data collection.

We will first establish a multidisciplinary research collaborative network composed of multidisciplinary academics, clinical experts specializing in GD, and patient representatives. This network will form a consensus on a core outcome set.

This set will pinpoint outcomes that matter most to both patients and clinicians and guide the work for the design of a protocol for the comprehensive longitudinal cohort.

Subsequently, the feasibility of this protocol will be assessed by piloting both data collection phases and hosting focus group discussions with relevant stakeholders to assess the viability and receptivity of the proposed study.