FIX EXCLUSIVES
The controversial Los Angeles-based Center for Transyouth Health and Development — one of the largest medical gender transitioning programs in the country — is shuttering its youth-focused treatment program this week.
The center’s youth-focused gender services will cease July 22 after spending its last existing weeks “actively assisting with patient navigation and seeking to identify potential alternative providers for our patients and their families,” officials stated in a news release.
The center, based at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, was run by Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a professor of clinical pediatrics with the Keck School of Medicine at USC.
The decision was made to close down after a “thorough legal and financial assessment,” according to a statement provided to The College Fix.
The Los Angeles Times reported center officials were concerned about mounting pressure from the Trump administration, which published an executive order earlier this year calling such treatments “chemical and surgical mutilation.”
The center confirmed the report to The Fix: “Over the past several months, President Trump’s executive orders, proposed federal legislation and rulemaking, growing economic uncertainty, and California’s deepening budget crisis, have made the situation even more dire.”
The closure comes as the University of Pennsylvania’s medical system also ends its practice of removing “healthy testicles, breasts, and other organs from kids who have gender dysphoria,” as The College Fix previously reported.
The Los Angeles center’s leader, Professor Olsen-Kennedy, has garnered controversy. After research found gender-transition drugs did not improve the mental health of recipients, she tried to bury the results.
“In October, the New York Times revealed that she’d chosen not to share findings from a taxpayer-funded study on puberty blockers. In December, Olson-Kennedy was sued by a former patient of hers who received a double mastectomy at age 14 with the good doctor’s sign-off,” Heterodox at USC reported.
According to Stop The Harm’s database, between 2019 and 2023, the center had 265 total sex change patients, 165 total surgery patients, and 103 total hormone and puberty blocker patients.
Additionally, it notes there are claims that “the hospital has billed for hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and sex change surgeries for minors.”
CBS News states that, overall, the center provided services and transgender-care to more than 3,000 youth up to age 25 during its time.
President Trump’s executive order states that “Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding. Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.”
The order goes on to express that the U.S. will not “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”
The College Fix reached out to Do No Harm, an organization “focused on keeping identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice” and a leading voice against youth-focused gender ideology.
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chair of the group, praised the development.
“It is about time that Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles closed its infamous Center for Transyouth,” he told The College Fix via email. “We applaud President Trump’s Administration for pressuring CHLA to make this change and encourage continued scrutiny over the hospital’s long record of inflicting permanent harm on innocent kids.”
“As health systems like CHLA, Penn Medicine, and Stanford Medicine continue to limit their sex-change services, it is important to make sure that these hospitals stop prescribing harmful puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors as well.”
MORE: This professor has helped guide 1,000 youths into transgender identities
IMAGE CAPTION & CREDIT: Transgender medicine flag
