Univ of Utah offers 'Adolescent Gender Management' clinic
The University of Utah medical center offers “Adolescent Transgender Medicine” services, including “puberty blockers” and “gender-affirming hormones.”
UU Health, the school’s medical center, has also created a clinic dedicated to youth transgender medicine, called the Adolescent Gender Management & Support Clinic (GEMS Clinic). It offers a “comprehensive clinic for transgender, non-binary, intersex, and non-conforming youth, as well as youth questioning their gender,” according to the Transgender Health Program.
The providers at the clinic are there to answer questions about a youth’s transition and help the individual with hormone therapy and suppression.
[RELATED: Vanderbilt Medical Center opening ‘transgender health’ clinic]
Families are expected to set up several appointments to prepare for the transition process. After starting hormones, UU Health says there should be a meeting about every three months for two years until the client has finished “gender-affirming puberty”.
During the first appointment, the clinic will review the transition process and contact the client’s mental health therapist. The second appointment consists of giving the client a physical exam, informing the client of benefits and risks of hormone therapy, and social support network. The client will start puberty blockers or hormonal therapy during the third meeting, and the fourth meeting will focus on any effects hormones have had on the client’s mood and body.
University of Utah also dedicates two health doctors to the adolescent health program, Adam W. Dell, MD, an instructor, and Nicole L. Mihalopoulos, MD, MPH. Both of them sit on the faculty of the Division of Adolescent Medicine at UU’s School of Medicine.
“We attend one of the best universities for health research in our conference [The Pac-12], but yet our money goes toward helping kids suppress their natural hormones so boys can be girls, and girls can be boys,” Ryan Barnes, a member of Turning Point USA at the University of Utah, told Campus Reform.
“I knew I was going to an extremely liberal school, but it’s frustrating when that money goes towards something I firmly disagree with. Why can’t the UU take that money and fund a research area for effective agricultural or wildlife conservation?” he continued.
Campus Reform reached out to the UU Health for comment but did not comment in time for publication.
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