The center was run by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, who came under fire for withholding the results of a study on puberty blockers.
The Children’s Hospital Los Angeles closed its child-focused Center for Transyouth Health and Development, a public provider of gender-related treatments for children that has been running for more than three decades, due to “severe impacts” of the Trump administration’s policies.
“Center team members were heartbroken to learn of the decision from hospital leaders, who emphasized that it was not made lightly, but followed a thorough legal and financial assessment of the increasingly severe impacts of recent administrative actions and proposed policies,” reads a statement by the Children’s Hospital. The closure is effective Tuesday, July 22.
The Children’s Hospital Los Angeles wrote nearly 1,000 prescriptions for gender-related hormonal treatments and performed transition-related surgery on 165 children from 2019 to 2023, according to the database developed by Do No Harm, which analyzes insurances claims for procedure and drug codes to discern the number and type of gender-related interventions performed at particular health-care facilities.
In 2016, the center was treating 725 children, and the youngest patient was three.
The now-defunct program was run by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a specialist in so-called gender-affirming care, who came under fire last year for publicly admitting to withholding the results of a study on the efficacy of puberty-blocking hormone treatments for minors because the results might be cited by critics. Olson-Kennedy is also being sued by a former patient for negligence after allegedly prescribing puberty blockers immediately upon meeting the patient for the first time.
Several hospitals joined Los Angeles Children’s in recent days in discontinuing gender-related treatments for minors, including Stanford Medicine, UPenn Medicine, Children’s Hospital Colorado, Denver Health, VCU, University of Virginia Health, Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, UChicago Medicine, and the Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C.
The closures follow the Trump administration’s investigation into three children’s hospitals for alleged genital mutilation in connection with transgender medical operations on minors. The FBI and Justice Department have targeted various medical clinics and practitioners, including Children’s Hospital Colorado and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, for investigation.
The Center for Transyouth Health and Development
The closure of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at L.A. Children’s is particularly noteworthy given the scale of the operation and the commitment of its staff to pursuing medical interventions for trans-identifying children.
Although the website has been scrubbed, archived records show that the center stated that its medical approach “rejects the gatekeeper model of care and focuses on how to help our patients and families in the least restrictive environment possible.” It further stated that it “focuses on gender-affirming care” and has a commitment to “helping to remove any institutional barriers” so that patients can become “their authentic selves.”
In a “Resources” subsection on its archived website, the center linked to a document produced by the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles titled “Understanding Binding: A Resource Guide for Parents of Transgender Youth,” which provided guidance on breast compression.
“In certain cases, consistent unsafe binding over years can cause damage to the skin and ribs,” reads the guide. “Although there may be certain health risks associated with unsafe binding practices, binding can provide significant improvements to an individual’s mental health, and thus overall health.”
The center also previously linked to a document with the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles logo titled “Tips and Tricks: Tucking, A Resource Guide for Trans Youth,” which refers to positioning the penis such that the groin area appears more flat.
“Individuals with a penis have two sockets, the Inguinal Canal, where the testicles can fit into,” reads the guide. “Some shift their penis in between their crotch area and their testicles into these canals. They then secure that area with some tape. Although not recommended, if taping only ever use athletic tape. Never use duct tape or other adhesive tapes.”
Olson-Kennedy, the doctor who directed the Center for Transyouth Health and Development claimed in 2023 to have provided services for approximately 1,200 young people and their families. Olson-Kennedy is the president-elect of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health.
A former patient — who received puberty blockers at age twelve, hormones at 13 and a double mastectomy at 14 — is suing Olson-Kennedy for medical negligence, claiming that the doctor came up with a gender dysphoria diagnosis “after mere minutes” of an initial visit without performing a mental-health assessment and recommended a surgical puberty-blocker implant. The lawsuit further claims that Olson-Kennedy misrepresented the patient’s medical history in a letter to a surgeon recommending a double mastectomy.
“It took Dr. Olson-Kennedy and the team at LA Children’s a single visit to send Clementine [the patient] down a life-altering, traumatic, body-disfiguring, and irreversibly damaging path of transgender medicalization,” reads a document from the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also alleges that Olson-Kennedy told the parents the patient was suicidal, even though the patient had never said such a thing.
“In order to convince her parents to agree to cross-sex hormone therapy, Dr. Olson-Kennedy again separated Clementine from her parents . . . and lied to them . . . ” states a document filed to the court in 2024. “Dr. Olson-Kennedy first told them that Clementine was suicidal. This was a lie.”
Olson-Kennedy came under fire last year because her research team received nearly $10 million in government funding since 2015 for a study following 95 children with gender dysphoria for two years to evaluate changes in mental health, yet the researchers withheld the data because she worried the findings might be used advance the argument in court that “we shouldn’t use [puberty] blockers because it doesn’t impact them,” referring to children who consider themselves transgender. In an interview with the New York Times, Olson-Kennedy further expressed worries that the study would be “weaponized” to support bans on gender-related treatments for children.
Speaking with the New York Times about the study, Olson-Kennedy said that puberty blockers did not lead to improvements in mental health because the children had been doing well prior to undergoing such treatments. She stated, “They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years.” That claim seemingly contradicted a 2020 paper by the researchers that said nearly a quarter of the children in the cohort endorsed lifetime suicidal ideation prior to receiving the drugs.
A pre-print of the study that has not yet undergone the peer-review process states, “Depression symptoms, emotional health and CBCL [Child Behavior Checklist] constructs did not change significantly over 24 months.” The authors suggest that the drugs preserve mental health and prevent decline: “Given that the mental health of youth with gender dysphoria who are older is often poor, it is likely that puberty blockers prevent the deterioration of mental health.” In the current version of the study, there is no control group for direct comparison.
The Trump Administration’s Multi-Front Fight Against ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Kids
Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a directive to Justice Department staff earlier this year, instructing them to enforce child mutilation statutes in compliance with President Trump’s executive order on protecting children from gender transition procedures.
The administration is also utilizing the federal rule-making process to punish hospitals that persist in providing trans procedures to minors, National Review previously reported.
The White House is in “the final stage of review for a new rule that would make it a condition of hospitals participating in Medicare or Medicaid that they not provide sex trait modifications to minors,” according to an administration official. The prohibition will apply to hospitals that provide puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender-transition surgeries to minors.
In addition, the Federal Trade Commission hosted a comprehensive workshop earlier this month on potentially deceptive practices related to transgender procedures on minors. The workshop featured scientists, whistleblowers, detransitioners, parents, attorneys, and other subject matter experts to speak on the harms associated with performing gender transition procedures on minors.
Elsewhere, pressure from the Trump administration pushed UPenn to agree to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports and revoke the records achieved by Lia Thomas, a male who claimed to be a woman and competed against female NCAA swimmers. Earlier this year, the NCAA prohibited men from competing against women in women’s sports following Trump’s executive order banning men from women’s sports through Title IX.
On the legal front, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in June to uphold Tennessee’s ban on transgender procedures for minors, an enormous victory for conservatives seeking to prevent them from happening. The ruling almost certainly ensures similar bans will be upheld in numerous other red states.
Next term, the Supreme Court is set to hear cases on state level bans of boys competing against girls in women’s sports.