Rady Children’s Hospital

Rady Children’s Hospital is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit hospital located in San Diego, California. The hospital operates the Center for Gender-Affirming Care that provides minors with hormone therapy, puberty blockers, voice therapy, and referrals for sex change surgeries. Claims data shows the hospital has billed for sex change surgeries and hormone therapy for minors.

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Key Findings

Rady Children’s Hospital operates the Center for Gender-Affirming Care to treat children, adolescents, and young adults with gender dysphoria. It is led by Program Director Bixby Marino-Kibbee, LCSW, and Medical Director Maja Marinkovic, M.D.

In June 2015, Dr. Marinkovic said that since the opening of the Center For Gender-Affirming Care in 2012, doctors had seen 80 patients and that they’ve seen a “surge as a result of the media focus on transgender people.”

KPBS also reported that puberty blocker medications are a “common treatment at the Rady clinic.”

Dr. Ron Newfield, an endocrinologist at Rady Children’s Hospital, said that the uncertainty and discomfort of not knowing what they’re feeling makes trans youth more prone to depression and suicidal ideations. He also said that puberty blockers can bring a lot of relief to a child, as it halts the development of the “wrong body.”

In April 2016, the San Diego Union-Tribune profiled a 14-year-old named Sam who received “gender-affirming care” at the Rady Children’s Hospital. Sam received counseling, hormone blockers, and testosterone shots before deciding to have a double mastectomy at age 14 from the Kryger Institute for Plastic Surgery.

In December 2019, Dr. David Inwards-Breland, previous co-director of the Center for Gender-Affirming care, wrote a research article titled, “Medically Assisted Gender Affirmation: When Children and Parents Disagree.” In the research paper, Dr. Inwards-Breland wrote about how to provide gender-affirming surgery to minors without parental consent, “We discuss three potential avenues for providing gender-affirming care over parental disagreement: legal carve-outs to parental consent, the mature minor doctrine and state intervention for neglect.” 

In July 2022, Breitbart profiled the Rady Children’s Hospital’s Center for Gender-Affirming Care, highlighting that the hospital offers sex change treatments to children including “comprehensive gender assessment,” “surgical referrals,” “insurance advocacy,” gender-affirming medical care,” and “gender affirming vocal therapy.”

Breitbart also reported that Rady Children’s Hospital promotes several books that encourage children to change their sex, including “The Transgender Child,” “The Gender Creative Child,” and others.

The Rady Children’s Hospital website lists The Endocrine Society as a resource on their website, an organization known for advocating for children to have puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery.