AACE ‘strongly opposes’ government policies prohibiting transgender care for adolescents
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The American Association of Clinical Endocrinology is opposing legislation to limit access to transgender care for adolescents and criminalize health care professionals providing transgender care for youths, according to a press release.
In a statement released on March 7, AACE urged government officials to rescind policies and laws that run contrary to evidence-based guidelines supporting transgender care for adolescents.
“We strongly oppose legislation that limits access of endocrine patients to established medical therapies recommended for treatment of transgender and gender diverse youth,” AACE said in the press release. “AACE strongly believes that decisions impacting health care of endocrine patients are best left to the health professional, the patient, and the patient’s families like for all medical care.”
As Healio previously reported, a directive issued by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in February defined transgender care for adolescents as “child abuse” and instructed the state’s department of family and protective services to follow the state law’s for child abuse, which “imposes reporting requirements upon all licensed professionals who have direct contact with children who may be subject to such abuse, including doctors, nurses, and teachers, and provides criminal penalties for failure to report such child abuse.” The directive has been criticized by multiple medical organizations.
“We strongly oppose legislation that criminalizes physicians and other health professionals who provide medically appropriate endocrine care as recommended by established medical guidelines,” AACE said in the press release. “The Endocrine Society and AACE have published peer-reviewed, evidence-based guidelines that support endocrine care of transgender and gender diverse patients. Criminalizing provision of endocrine care will further increase the health disparities of this very vulnerable population.”
In 2017, AACE and the Endocrine Society published guidelines on care for transgender and gender-diverse adolescents. Those guidelines recommend gender affirming HT for adolescents who have a persistent gender identity for at least 6 months that does not align with their sex at birth, have the capacity to make medical decisions, have had potential confounding mental health conditions addressed, and have been evaluated by a health care professional trained in gender incongruence in adolescents. The guidelines state decisions on both puberty blockers and HT should be made with the input of the qualified health care professional, the child and the family.
“Many transgender and gender diverse people seek HT under the supervision of an endocrinologist or other medically trained health care professional to better align their bodies with their gender identities,” AACE said in the press release. “Being transgender is widely accepted to require medical treatment for those patients who seek it. Medical treatment may include behavioral assessment, HT and surgery. These treatments are well established in the relevant established, international professional society guidelines, including those from the Endocrine Society co-sponsored by AACE and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.”
The Texas directive was the latest government policy aimed at limiting access to gender-affirming care for adolescents. As Healio previously reported, in 2021, Arkansas became the first state to pass a law prohibiting health care professionals from prescribing pubertal blockers, HT or surgeries for transgender care in minors.
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