GLAAD STATEMENT ON NEW HHS REPORT ON TRANSGENDER HEALTH CARE

(New York, NY – May 1, 2025) – GLAAD, the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) media advocacy organization, is issuing the following statement in response to a new report today from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on transgender health care. The report comes at the request of the Trump administration through an executive order in January seeking to ban lifesaving medical care for transgender people.

GLAAD’s President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis (she/her) released the following statement:
“A report in the suggestion that someone’s authentic self and who they are can be ‘changed’ is discredited junk science. This so-called guidance is grossly misleading and in direct contrast to the recommendation of every leading health authority in the world. This report amounts to nothing more than forcing the same discredited idea of conversion therapy that ripped families apart and harmed gay, lesbian, and bisexual young people for decades.”

The government has not released the names of those involved in consulting or authoring this report.

For decades, every major medical association, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, has recognized safe, effective, best-practices care for gender dysphoria. Decades of substantial peer-reviewed research shows that this care is safe, effective and essential to the health and well-being of transgender people and youth.

Evidence around the safety and effectiveness of health care for transgender people of all ages is as strong as the evidence for treatments across other areas of medicine. Health care for transgender people relies on the same trusted medications used to treat cisgender youth for a range of health care issues, like early-onset puberty. Efforts to ban these treatments are only for transgender youth, not cisgender youth, who can still access them without concern about their safety, efficacy, or long-term effects.

Every major U.S. medical and mental health association has also spoken out against conversion practices or so-called “conversion therapy,” which has long been used to shame LGBTQ young people into hating themselves for being unable to change.