Jonathan Keith, an assistant professor in the Department of Surgery at New Jersey Medical School

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Photography: 
Viorel Florescu

The first operation in New Jersey to create a penis for a transgender man was successfully performed in February by surgeons and physicians associated with the Rutgers Center for Transgender Health, a new group of psychiatrists, plastic surgeons, ob/gyns, and urologists. They were led by plastic surgeon Jonathan Keith, an assistant professor in the Department of Surgery at New Jersey Medical School (NJMS), who learned the procedure during a fellowship in Belgium and intends to help teach the complex operation to Rutgers medical students studying both female-to-male and male-to-female transitions. The 14-hour gender-reassignment procedure, called a phalloplasty, was conducted at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey, part of RWJBarnabas Health. Saint Barnabas and University Hospital in Newark, which is the teaching hospital of NJMS, are the only New Jersey hospitals that conduct the procedure.