Name & Gender Data at Student Health Service and CAPS

• As of February 26th, 2025 Student Health Services (SHS) and Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) are collecting and storing students’ lived first names, pronouns, gender, and sexual orientation independently of the rest of campus. This will allow students to use a name and pronouns with their healthcare providers that they may not be comfortable using with the rest of the university. An initial update questionnaire will be assigned to students upon their first appointment after February 26th, 2025.

• SOGI stands for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. For our purposes, this also includes lived name and pronouns. SOGI data is commonly collected as a part of demographic tracking by institutions that provide services to the public. SOGI data helps inform institutions of what groups are/aren’t being served so they can make adjustments to their practices and increase the effectiveness and accessibility of their programs. It also helps inform healthcare providers on what questions they should ask in the course of care.

• Lived name is a chosen name, other than one’s legal name, that they use in day-to-day life. There are many reasons someone may use a lived name, such as to reflect their gender identity, as a nickname, or to go by an Americanized name. At UCSB, all campus systems are required to offer the option to display a lived name. This name is to be used in all cases where legal name is not required. Legal name is required for situations involving legal documentation, billing, government organizations, federal funding, and identity confirmation. To see a list of which systems require lived vs. legal name, please navigate to The Registrar’s Lived and Legal Name Page.

• UCSB collects Lived Name, Pronouns, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation via Identity Manager. This information was previously utilized across campus in a variety of contexts that extend beyond academics (billing, housing, healthcare, etc.), which made it difficult for students to choose when and where they would like to identify a certain way. Healthcare can be incredibly personal and exists in a different context than the rest of the university. While this change requires updating information in more than one system, allowing students the autonomy to choose how they wish to identify in an academic context and medical context separately will help us provide more personalized and attentive healthcare. Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) data collected by SHS/CAPS is used exclusively for medical purposes and is securely protected by both HIPAA and FERPA laws.

• This change in how we store data begins on February 26th, 2025. The pre-appointment questionnaire is automatically assigned when you schedule your first appointment (at CAPS or SHS) after the launch date. This applies to all new and existing patients at SHS/CAPS.

• We want every patient to have the opportunity to update this information in their chart. The best way to ensure that all students have that opportunity is to make it a required assignment. Submitting the questionnaire is mandatory, but some questions have the option to decline answering.

• Once you submit the initial questionnaire, your answers will be populated in your student health profile. This information can be updated through your UCSB MyHealth portal by logging in using your UCSB Net ID, going to your profile, selecting edit profile, and editing the individual boxes. Press save to lock in your changes. The changes should sync throughout Student Health/CAPS immediately, though some systems may need to be refreshed for the changes to appear.

• No, your care provider is not able to make changes to your profile on your behalf. The only ways to update your information are by making edits to your profile through your UCSB MyHealth portal or by asking your provider to reassign the name and gender update questionnaire.

• If you would like to use the same lived first name, pronouns, gender identity, or sexual orientation at SHS/CAPS that you use across campus, please log in to Identity Manager and your UCSB MyHealth portal separately and input the same information in both places.

• If you don’t feel that it would be useful for your medical providers to have access to your Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity information, you are welcome to select the “Prefer not to answer” option on those questions and press submit. Your provider may still ask you for this information if it is relevant to your treatment. Lived name is optional and only needs to be filled out if you would like for SHS/CAPS to refer to you as something other than your legal name. Pronouns are a mandatory category at this time so that our healthcare providers can know how to respectfully refer to you. If you change your mind or assume a different label at any point, you can update your answers via the profile editing feature in your portal.

• Due to the limitations of our portal/charting software, we are not able to collect lived last name separately from the rest of campus. Until this discrepancy is resolved, SHS/CAPS will continue to source last name from Identity Manager. If a lived last name is not indicated in Identity Manager, legal last name will be used in SHS/CAPS systems. If a lived last name is indicated in Identity Manager, your healthcare provider will see that name paired with any lived first name indicated in your MyHealth portal. The MyHealth portal is not capable of displaying a lived last name and will always default to a legal last name. If you would like to confirm that your lived last name appears in the SHS/CAPS charting system, please view your profile information in Identity Manager. If you change your lived last name in Identity Manager, it should update in SHS/CAPS’ charting system after 24 hours.

• If you were a student prior to February 2025, SHS/CAPS systems will maintain the information provided through Identity Manager before that date until you make updates in your MyHealth portal. If you started at UCSB after February 2025 SHS/CAPS systems will default to the information from your original UCSB application until you make updates in your MyHealth portal. If you make any changes or updates to your lived first name, pronouns, gender identity, or sexual orientation in Identity Manager after February 2025, they will not be reflected in SHS/CAPS’ systems.

• You can view your personal information, including lived first name, pronouns, gender identity, and sexual orientation, by signing into your UCSB MyHealth portal and navigating to “Profile”. Your MyHealth profile will display your legal last name, but if a lived last name is indicated in Identity Manager, it will be visible to your healthcare provider(s).

SHS/CAPS receives a gender value from the registrar’s office, acquired by converting the gender identity disclosed via GOLD into an M, F, X, or U value. Besides this gender marker, no other gender/sexuality information collected by the University is accessible to SHS/CAPS. All information pertaining to sexual or gender identity, including lived first name, pronouns, gender identity, and sexuality can only be seen by SHS/CAPS if the student has responded to the Name and Gender Data Update Questionnaire and/or updated their profile on the UCSB MyHealth portal.

SHS/CAPS receives a gender value from the registrar’s office, acquired by converting the gender identity disclosed via Identity Manager into an M, F, X, or U value. Besides this gender marker, no other gender/sexuality information collected by the University is accessible to SHS/CAPS. All information pertaining to sexual or gender identity, including lived first name, pronouns, gender identity, and sexuality can only be seen by SHS/CAPS if the student has responded to the Name and Gender Data Update Questionnaire and/or updated their profile on the UCSB MyHealth portal.

No. The information you indicate in your MyHealth portal will only be used to identify you at SHS/CAPS. It does not need to match Identity Manager.

• Your lived first name, pronouns, and gender identity are displayed at the top of your chart note and can be seen by the healthcare providers involved in your care. Your sexual orientation is stored further down in your chart along with other demographic information like race, year, etc. 
• All lived name and gender data is kept confidential by UCSB Student Health Services (SHS) and Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and will only be used by healthcare providers when relevant to your treatment. This information will not be shared with other entities on or off campus unless you request and sign a medical release form*.
  • *or if a referral is made to an off-campus provider including forwarded chart notes

• This information will be part of your patient information chart in Point and Click, the system used by UCSB Student Health Services and Counseling and Psychological Services to store patient information and coordinate care. Care providers at SHS/CAPS who have access to your chart will be able to see this information. If you sign a medical release form to have all of your medical records from UCSB SHS/CAPS shared with an outside medical entity, your lived name and identity data might be accessible in those records.

• No. Due to FERPA and HIPAA laws, only the student/patient has access to their own medical records unless they sign a medical release form giving explicit consent. The only way your parent/guardian could access this information is if you give them your login to your UCSB MyHealth Portal. This is true even for students under the age of 18.

• If you are referred from UCSB to a medical entity outside of Student Health and/or request that your medical records be shared with an entity outside of Student Health, your lived first name, pronouns, gender identity, and sexual orientation may appear on those documents. If you have concerns about this possibility, please talk to your healthcare provider before pursuing the transfer of medical information to entities outside of UCSB.
• If you are referred to an off-campus behavioral health provider by CAPS, only legal name will appear on your insurance referral form.

• Student Health and CAPS do not share lived first names with UC SHIP or any other insurance. Your legal name will be used for all insurance purposes. If you would like to see what name is on file with your insurance, you should log in to your insurance portal (UC SHIP portal here). The gender marker on file with the registrar (from GOLD) may be used in cases where insurance requires a gender marker.
• If you have recently undergone a legal name change, please make sure your legal name is updated with your insurance AND the UCSB Registrar before processing claims.

• Yes, legal name is still collected and stored by SHS/CAPS for insurance and billing purposes. Legal name is also the default for students who don’t have a separate lived first name listed in our system. The only way to change your legal name in our system is to get a court-approved legal name change and update it with the Registrar’s Office.

• SHS and CAPS pull legal names directly from the UCSB Registrar’s Office. If you have recently changed your legal name, you must update this information with the UCSB Registrar’s Office. Instructions for updating your legal name after a legal name change can be found on the Registrar’s Lived and Legal Name page.

• Our current system does not allow for multiple values (in this case, pronouns) to be displayed in the same category. We have added “she/they”, “he/they”, and “all pronouns” options that can be used until our system is able to accommodate this action.