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Even as it continues to provide other gender-affirming care, Oregon Health & Science University stopped offering surgery months ago as a treatment for gender dysphoria in patients younger than 19, the university confirmed Wednesday.
The procedures were already rare, at least for patients under 18. OHSU says that in fiscal years 2025 and 2024, “fewer than 30 patients age 17 and under received gender-affirming surgeries.”
Still, this data does not account for 18-year-old patients. And the shift by one of the leading transgender medical care providers in the region shows the effects of Trump administration pressure in an area of hotly contested medical science.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January saying it was U.S. policy not to fund gender transition of children—which it defined as patients under 19 years of age.
OHSU told local news media at the time that the order would have no immediate effect. But at some point, the university did in fact change its offerings.
In its statement Wednesday, OHSU said the last time it performed a gender-affirming surgery on a patient under 19 was in February 2025.
“At this time, OHSU does not have the surgical care team available to provide gender-affirming surgeries to patients younger than 19,” the medical center said in a statement to WW. “Consequently, we have paused scheduling surgeries for this patient population.”
Oregon Public Broadcasting and other media in July documented Kaiser Permanente’s national decision to halt gender-affirming surgery for patients under 19. But the shift at OHSU, which as recently as 2023 billed its Transgender Health Program as one of the “largest and most comprehensive” in the United States, does not appear to have been previously reported.
Debates have roiled for years over the appropriateness of various treatments for people diagnosed with gender dysphoria, especially in the case of youth.
Gender-affirming care is a broad term. It can encompass therapy as well as physical treatments, such as puberty blockers, which are generally reversible, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. The AAP says other gender-affirming treatments like hormone therapy are partially reversible, while surgery is not.
The AAP endorses carefully administered gender-affirming care in minors with gender dysphoria as a way to promote their physical and social well-being. But critics, including those leading the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, condemn the care as “junk science.”
The subject came up at a news conference Wednesday regarding an unrelated matter. Asked by WW if OHSU had stopped offering gender-affirming surgeries to minors, OHSU president Dr. Shereef Elnahal said yes, it had.
As in the past, Elnahal said he defers strongly to the assessments of clinicians in the Transgender Health Program as to the appropriateness and risks of various forms of gender-affirming care. He said the change at OHSU took effect before he became president this summer.
“My understanding,” he said, “is that the clinicians who were previously performing those surgeries have elected to no longer do that for various reasons.”
He said these reasons included risks to the institution, “given dynamics at the federal government level.”
OHSU, he added, continues to offer other forms of gender-affirming care. This is despite a federal proposal in December that would restrict Medicare and Medicaid dollars for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to those under 19.
Elnahal acknowledged that, as for most hospitals, the prospect for OHSU of losing such funding was an “existential matter.” But he noted that those rules were not yet final, and referred to a lawsuit filed by Oregon and other states that seeks to stop it.
“We are continuing our services for now,” he says. “That is not yet a final rule and does not have the force of law.”
