Dr. Ximena Lopez Receives 2018 Upstander Award at Time to Thrive in Orlando

Born to Mexican parents in El Paso, Texas, Ximena Lopez grew up in Spain for most of her
childhood. She moved to Mexico as an adolescent where she completed medical school and
then to the United States to continue medical training. She completed her residency in pediatrics
at the University of Illinois at Chicago, followed by the fellowship in pediatric endocrinology at
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusettes.
In 2010, Ximena moved to Dallas, Texas, where she works as a pediatric endocrinologist at Children’s Health, and as
an Associate Professor of Pediatrics, at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She started caring for
transgender youth in 2012, and in 2014 she founded and became the Medical Director of the GENder, Education and
Care, Interdisciplinary Support Program (GENECIS). This interdisciplinary program provides comprehensive mental
and medical health care to transgender and gender non-conforming youth. GENECIS is the first and largest program
of its kind in the Southwest with almost 600 patients to date. The clinic provides education to the medical and nonmedical
community on the rights and needs of transgender youth.
18#TimeToTHRIVE
Ximena’s passion is to improve the lives and the medical care of transgender youth. She is the co-chair of the Transgender
Health Special Interest Group from the Pediatric Endocrine Society of North America, Executive Committee member of
the Section of Endocrinology of the American Academy of Pediatrics and an advisory member for the Young Gender Clinic
Committee at the Human Rights Campaign. She is also the principal investigator for a study that focuses on the long-term
outcomes on the mental and physical health of transgender adolescents that receive puberty suppression and cross-sex
hormones before adulthood.