Comprehensive Care Clinics for Transgender & Non-Binary Youth: Considerations and Best Practices, is a new guide that provides advice and best practices for clinics and hospitals that seek to promote the health and well-being of transgender and non-binary youth through the creation of multidisciplinary care clinics.

Over the past few years, more of us have heard, read stories about, or know transgender and non-binary youth. Similarly, healthcare providers across various specialties have seen an increase in young people recognizing that their sex assigned at birth does not match the gender they know themselves to be. Acknowledging this increasing awareness, clinicians are recognizing the medical and psychological needs of transgender and non-binary youth and are seeking ways to care for them and their families. Youth gender clinics that offer transgender and non-binary young people access to comprehensive, multidisciplinary clinical care have begun to emerge over the past decade. Youth gender clinics typically combine providers from different specialties to meet the varied physical and mental health needs of transgender and non-binary youth and offer or connect them to an array of other services, such as support groups, playgroups and legal services.

Since 2015, the HRC Foundation has worked closely with advisors from these clinics to develop more resources for transgender and non-binary youth and the adults in their lives. The HRC Foundation’s publication Supporting and Caring for Transgender Children – co-released with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Osteopathic Pediatricians – provides helpful background on transgender and non-binary youth, including information from medical and education experts, myths about gender transition in childhood and approaches to gender-affirming care. This guide is designed to work in conjunction with this earlier publication. Here, we focus on the institutions being built to care for transgender and non-binary youth – youth gender clinics – and cover some considerations for healthcare providers and administrators setting up their own clinics.