Who is Miss Jai?
Miss Jai Smith, MPH, is a gender Non-Binary, Transgender, queer, educator focusing on capacity building for gender-affirming care and serving Transgender and Non-Binary patients. She has a Master of Public Health with a focus on health and wellness for Transgender and Non-Binary communities.
He has over a decade of experience working in the fields of HIV prevention and medical care and develops and facilitates trainings on supporting Transgender and Non-Binary people for providers at local, state, regional, and national levels. Miss Jai facilitates training for universities, healthcare providers, national pharmacies, public health, and community-based organizations on Transgender-inclusive practices to reduce barriers to care for Transgender and Non-Binary clients. Additionally, she provides technical assistance to private and public healthcare agencies and community-based organizations on supporting Transgender and Non-Binary clients and conducting gender-inclusive surveillance and data collection.
Miss Jai's purpose is to uplift and celebrate the lives of her Transgender and Non-Binary siblings and forge avenues for us all to thrive and experience our maximum health potential. She is a motivated, dedicated, and passionate member of the Transgender community, who continues to advocate for reducing barriers and increasing access to health care for her Transgender and Non-Binary siblings.
What brought Miss Jai to this work?
I have always been passionate about community health since I was a kid. Just before my 14th birthday, I participated in my first AIDSWalk Tucson event in honor of my uncle Jimmy who had just passed away from complications to HIV. Having just come out as queer the year before, Jimmy was a queer elder who helped my family learn affirming ways of raising a queer child. I raised money at my high school by wagering my hair: if I made my goal, I would cut my hair and dye it pink.
Little did I know this would launch my public health passion. I went to every training opportunity offered through the local HIV organization and became a volunteer HIV educator and peer leader. This passion followed me into college, where I coordinated HIV testing events, facilitated queer sex education classes, and trained organizations on how to support Transgender and Non-Binary people like myself.
After receiving my undergraduate degree, I spent more than a decade working in HIV prevention and care while continuing to provide training on Transgender and Non-Binary health and wellness to healthcare and public health organizations at local, state, regional, and national levels.
In 2020, I returned to school to get my master’s in public health. I focused exclusively on Transgender and Non-Binary health disparities throughout my program and after reflecting on data from the 2016 U.S. Trans Survey, I realized it was necessary to shift my focus from working with Trans and Non-Binary communities and focus on a large barrier that many of face at accessing care: the health provider. By focusing on public health and healthcare provider capacity-building education and technical assistance I believe we can effectively forge avenues to better health outcomes for Transgender, Non-Binary, and Intersex people.
Since founding Toadhenge Consulting in 2022, I have trained over 1,300 colleagues from universities, healthcare organizations, national pharmacies, county and state public health services, and community-based service providers. I have provided ongoing technical and capacity-building assistance on gender-affirming and inclusive changes to policies and procedures, electronic health records, health surveillance, strategic planning, community engagement activities, and been a subject matter expert for Transgender and Non-Binary health needs. My mission in this work is to uplift and honor the lives of my Transgender, Non-Binary, and Intersex siblings by increasing health service access to reduce health disparities and help us thrive.
I hope you will join me in this mission by learning about and actively dismantling health barriers for Transgender, Non-Binary, and Intersex people.
How can you support gender-expansive communities with Ask Miss Jai?
Take an online course
Improve your skills with these self-paced capacity-building workshops on serving gender-expansive people.
Sign up for 1-on-1 strategizing
Take a deep dive with personalized support on gender-affirming strategies for providing services.
Schedule live training & TA
Bring Miss Jai to train your colleagues or support technical assistance projects for serving TGNBI communities.
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