Gender-Affirming Care Halted for Minors at Leading LGBTQ Clinic
Amidst evolving federal directives, one of the state’s prominent LGBTQ clinics has ceased providing gender-affirming care for individuals under 18. This shift follows an executive order from President Donald Trump and echoes a similar move by Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
CEO Jessyca Leach of Prisma Care Center, previously known as the Southwest Center for HIV and AIDS, stated that the clinic has been reaching out to affected families to inform them of the changes.
“We unfortunately as an agency also experienced our funds being completely frozen for a week and a half,” Leach explained. “So we’re already walking through what the devastation of these executive orders looks like, and now we’re trying to help our clients, our patients, our communities find ways to get care.”
Despite this setback, Prisma Care Center remains committed to offering other crucial services, including HIV and STI testing, mental health support, and gender-affirming care for those over 18.
While minors constituted a smaller group of the gender-affirming care recipients, Leach highlighted that this group primarily consisted of 16- and 17-year-olds.
The clinic is collaborating with local partners to ensure continuity of care for approximately 30 young patients affected by the service discontinuation.
“We want to handle this as well as we possibly can knowing that the news we’re giving to people is devastating,” Leach said, underlining the complexity of the decision. The clinic’s immediate priority is safeguarding federal funding for their other programs, such as the no-cost HIV and STI testing center, especially in light of potential future restrictions on broader affirmative care services.
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