Accord Alliance
Accord Alliance promotes comprehensive and integrated approaches to care that enhance the health and well-being of people and families affected by disorders of sex development (DSD).
Accord Alliance partners with patients and families, healthcare administrators, clinicians, support groups, and researchers to facilitate open communication and collaboration among all persons working together to improve care of those affected by DSD. Through these partnerships, Accord Alliance intends to help all families experience better care, better outcomes, and better lives.
A new standard of care
In 2006, a consensus for a new paradigm of care for people diagnosed with “intersex” conditions was developed by 50 international experts and patient advocates. Accompanied by a change in nomenclature referring collectively to these conditions as disorders of sex development (DSD), a new standard of care was proposed focusing on improved quality of life through a patient-centered model of care with an emphasis on an interdisciplinary team approach to health care delivery.
Accord Alliance was founded in March of 2008 with the purpose of assuming the role of a convenor of stakeholders across the health care system and DSD communities in order to promote this new standard of care.
ISNA could not assume such role because there was concern among many healthcare professionals, parents, and mainstream healthcare system funders that ISNA’s views were biased or that an association with ISNA would be frowned upon by colleagues and peers, so in 2007, ISNA sponsored and convened a national group of health care and advocacy professionals to establish a nonprofit organization charged with making sure the new ideas about appropriate care would be known and implemented across the country. ISNA’s funds and assets (including copyrights for the Handbook for Parents and Clinical Guidelines) were transferred to Accord Alliance.
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