The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the largest U.S. professional association of pediatricians (representing an estimated 67,000 members), has condemned a report opposing gender-affirming care recently released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). As such, the AAP has directed its pediatric healthcare providers to “continue to support pediatricians and the well-being of all children” by continuing to provide gender-affirming care to youth as endorsed by almost all major U.S. medical associations. 

“This report misrepresents the current medical consensus and fails to reflect the realities of pediatric care,” said AAP President, Dr. Susan J. Kressly, M.D., in a statement. “AAP was not consulted in the development of this report, yet our policy and intentions behind our recommendations were cited throughout in inaccurate and misleading ways. The report prioritizes opinions over dispassionate reviews of evidence.”

“As we have seen with immunizations, bypassing medical expertise and scientific evidence has real consequences for the health of America’s children,” Kressly’s statement continued. “Patients, their families, and their physicians—not politicians or government officials —should be the ones to make decisions together about what care is best for them based on evidence-based, age-appropriate care.”

AAP’s statement was co-signed by the American Academy of Family Physicians, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American College of Physicians, American Osteopathic Association, and American Psychiatric Association.

At the start of May, the Trump administration’s HHS released a 400-page review of trans youth healthcare that called the current best practices for gender-affirming care— endorsed by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) as well as mainstream medical organizations and professionals — “unproven.” The report was completed in just 90 days, identified none of its contributors, and underwent no peer review process before publication. 

The report ignored numerous studies in which trans people expressed happiness with their transitions and instead pointed to a 1988 study of low employment and romantic partners among trans people as evidence of trans people doing “poorly” after receiving gender-affirming care. The report also pushed conversion therapy to change the gender identities of trans youth and promoted long-debunked claims that trans youth identify as such due to a mass “social contagion,” and are likely to just be gay or to return to a cisgender identity later in life.

The report also pushed claims that European countries are “pulling back” on gender-affirming care after the review of the United Kingdom’s Cass Review, a four-year-long study of trans healthcare research that excluded numerous studies showing the benefits of gender-affirming care. Despite this claim, major medical associations from France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland have all released reports condemning the Cass Review’s findings.

The AAP has roundly criticized legislative efforts to outlaw gender-affirming care. The AAP joined five other medical organizations representing 600,000 physicians and medical students opposing Republican infringements on the patient-physician relationship, including the Trump administration’s elimination of $477 million in related research grant funding-affirming treatments, removing gender-affirming care as a covered benefit for the children of federal employees and military members, and an April 22 memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi threatening physicians with felony charges for providing certain types of gender-affirming care.