Children's Minnesota opens clinic for transgender youth

The complex medical and psychological needs of transgender and gender-diverse youth have prompted Children's Minnesota to launch a clinic to provide more timely treatment and information to children and their parents.

While almost 3 percent of Minnesota's high school students identify as gender diverse, this group of children often doesn't know where to turn when they first have questions, said Dr. Angela Kade Goepferd, medical director of the clinic, which started scheduling appointments Tuesday and will open to patients on April 22.

"What we really want to provide is a welcoming place to ask the questions they need to ask and to decide what interventions the children are going to need," she said.

The new clinic, adjacent to Children's flagship hospital in Minneapolis, will provide a variety of services, including initial consultations and therapy sessions to guide patients and make sure children are prepared for the treatment decisions they make, and hormone therapy to give patients bodies that conform to their identified genders.

The clinic will serve patients who are transgender, meaning they don't identify with their birth genders, and patients whose genders are diverse or haven't been identified. Goepferd said identity questions sometimes surface in preschool years, but often emerge in adolescence when children are nearing puberty.

Delays in addressing these questions can be problematic, and some children will have better treatment options if care is initiated before puberty. Medications that delay the onset of puberty or menstruation can give children time to sort through those options, but they can't be used after children have reached those developmental phases.

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