Transgender Medical Treatment for Youth Ends at Yale New Haven Health
Connecticut parents of trans youth respond to the loss of gender-affirming care at Yale. The move comes as providers across the country reduce care under pressure from the Trump administration.
by Lana Leonard
On Thursday Yale New Haven Health announced that they will no longer provide gender-affirming medical treatment (prescriptions) to minors and young adults under 19. The announcement came one day after a similar announcement by Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. Both cited pressure from the Trump Administration, which announced sending subpoenas to more than 20 medical providers and clinics serving trans youth earlier this month. It is unclear if Yale New Haven Health was one of the 20 subpoenaed.
Clinic closures and reductions in services have swept across the nation. Read our coverage of the cessation of gender-affirming surgeries for trans youth and young adults by Kaiser Permanente.
In Connecticut, parents, trans youth, and advocates are on high alert after New Haven Health’s pediatric gender program announced they would wind down affirming care. Two parents spoke to Assigned Media about what is happening to their children’s healthcare at Yale New Haven Health, and the consequences this decision will have on their children and the local trans youth community.
“Kids are watching. They're watching how adults are going to respond in this moment,” Melissa Combs said. Combs is a prominent trans youth parent advocate based in New Haven. She is the founder of The Out Accountability Project — an organization that focuses on extinguishing bullying against LGBTQ+ youth in local public schools.
Combs said she wants trans kids to know that “you are seen and you are worthy of life-saving medical care. And I know it's hard to imagine right now, but there's a whole bunch of us that are standing up and fighting for you, and that commitment will continue unbroken.”
Combs relocated her family to New Haven from Ann Harbor, Mich. in 2015. Since then, her son has been receiving care from Yale’s pediatric gender program. She says her son is stoic, and that she, meanwhile, has had to become a policy expert overnight.
After the subpoenas were announced on July 9, Combs felt that it was only a matter of time before she heard her son’s medication treatment would be cancelled. All they could do was prepare for such potential lapses.
“People don't really know where these subpoenas went, but based on clinics and the timing that they closed, you can guess that they got a subpoena,” Combs said.
“Knowing what I know, and all the attorneys and all the providers I talked to, I mean, the writing was on the wall, and I didn't see care for youth holding out past, really, the end of the summer. And sadly, I was correct,” Combs continued..
In late April, just days after the U.S. Attorney General Pat Bondi put gender-affirming care practitioners on notice, Conn. Attorney General William Tong in February joined a coalition of 17 attorneys general, including New York Attorney General Letita James, in filing an amicus brief against the Trump administration. Like New York, Connecticut has some of the most protective state laws against anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination.
“In Connecticut, we don’t inject politics into private family medical decisions, and we don’t let adults bully our kids. It’s that simple,” Tong said in February. “I stand with the parents, kids and doctors fighting for access to life-saving healthcare in the face of Trump’s blatantly discriminatory order.”
Still, many parents are feeling on edge.
“We’re almost muzzled,” one father told Assigned Media in a phone interview. He spoke on condition of anonymity. “It's nice if anybody can help share what it's like, when — at least right now — we don't feel like we can.”
For this father, that person who can share without a shred of fear is Combs.
After the presidential election in 2024, he and his family moved from the South more than 1,000 miles to Connecticut to secure gender-affirming care for his daughter — care that had been outlawed in the family’s home-state. They were on a waitlist for an appointment since their move, now they have to start at square one, identifying one of the increasingly rare providers who remain open. He says their saving grace is their local affirming Church.
“Providing for your child's health and safety is the baseline; those are the things you have to address first,” said the father. “Everything else is fairly superficial,” he continued.
Moving was expensive, and heartbreaking. It would be painstaking to move again, the father said. He already watched his child cry once as she said goodbye to friends and family, their support system — now hundreds of miles between them.
He and his wife will continue seeking accessible healthcare for their daughter. They will stay up-to-date on any changes to healthcare for trans youth, and they will advocate, so that their daughter can focus on being a kid.
A Yale New Haven Health representative sent Assigned Media a statement via email stating that they “have been carefully monitoring federal executive orders and administrative actions relating to gender-affirming care for patients under age 19. After a thorough assessment of the current environment, we have made the very difficult decision to modify the pediatric gender program to eliminate the medication treatment component of the gender-affirming program for patients under age 19.”
“This decision was not made lightly. We are aware of the profound impact that this decision will have on the patients treated in this program, as well as their families. We are committed to offering transitional support as the medication treatment component of the pediatric gender-affirming care program winds down, and our providers will continue to provide mental health and other health care services to these patients in a compassionate care environment,” the statement continued.
The statement matched a similar letter sent to patients attributed to Yale New Haven Health's Chief of Pediatrics Clifford W. Bogue, and Senior Vice President of Women and Children Services Beth Heinz. (A copy of the letter was sent to a parent of a patient).
Mental health support is not among the evidence-based treatments for gender dysphoria, a point underscored by new guidelines for treatment from providers covering Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
On July 25, the Trump Administration celebrated the growing list of hospitals capitulating to his ire in a statement on the White House website. The list includes Mt. Sinai and New York-Presbyterian, which the administration assessed as having had “curbed” gender-affirming care for minors.
Assigned Media has also been following interruptions in care for trans youth in New York City hospitals such as NYU Langone Health and Mt. Sinai where patients are seeing major inconsistencies for care in addition to prescription delays, care denials, and appointment cancellations, leading to at least one lawsuit.
Several major NYC hospitals have assented to President Trump’s discriminatory Jan. 28 executive order by pausing or canceling care for trans youth patients, despite the legality of his decree being challenged in the courts.
For families, however, this isn’t the end. It is just the beginning.
“For Yale patients, it isn’t necessarily an end to care. They will still see their doctors if they choose. My child will continue to be a patient there, and I know others are doing the same. Not having access to all medically necessary treatments – prescriptions – will mean a return to a state of dysphoria that is life-threatening. It is terrifying,” Combs said.
Lana Leonard (they/them) is a transgender, nonbinary freelance multimedia journalist, and social justice activist based in New York City. Their words have shown up in Assigned Media, LGBTQ Nation, Under the Desk News, GLAAD among other publications. They are a former GLAAD staffer under the GLAAD Media Institute where they worked as an associate for the Education & Advocacy team. They're the recipient of the NLGJA's 2025 Excellence in Online Journalism Award.