Myeshia Price has won the Rosalind Franklin Society Special Award in Science for contributions to transgender health.

This award is given to the best paper of the year by a woman or underrepresented minority in each of the Mary Ann Liebert Inc. journals in health, medicine, and biotechnology. Price, an associate professor in Counseling and Educational Psychology, called the award a complete surprise, adding, “Being recognized for a publication is an important reminder for me to take the time to reflect on things that I think academics just consider everyday aspects of our lives, but ultimately can have an impact on others. I am honored to be recognized among the many often underrepresented and underrecognized people providing amazing contributions to science.”

Price’s work focuses on LGBTQ youth mental health and wellbeing, with a good portion specifically focused on transgender and nonbinary youth. This specific manuscript, “Association of gender identity acceptance with fewer suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth,” is very meaningful to them because while the focus in suicide prevention among transgender and nonbinary youth is often on risk factors, this work explores the impact of support. 

“Specifically, it separately illustrates the potentially life-saving impact of gender identity support from parents, other family members, school professionals, health care professionals, friends, and classmates,” she added. “Contributing to our understanding of protective factors, this manuscript found that although much of the research on gender identity acceptance has focused on parents, the current study's findings highlight that although acceptance among parents is important, adult interventions should go far beyond that. Specific to our work here in the School of Education, these findings suggest that interventions should engage school and health care professionals in training that promotes gender-identity knowledge and acceptance as these professionals' acceptance was associated with 33% and 32% lower odds of attempting suicide, respectively.”