A healthcare organization that operates clinics inside Seattle public schools says it can now offer “gender-affirming” hormone treatment to children, emails from a health center program manager reveal.
Emails obtained by The Daily Wire reveal that Neighborcare Health, a healthcare organization that runs clinics in middle and elementary schools in the Seattle Public Schools district, announced in January 2023 that hormone treatments were now included in the “gender-affirming care” it could offer.
“The Neighborcare Health team wanted to share an exciting new update to our School-based Health Center services,” the email from a Program Manager for Neighborcare Health, which was obtained by Parents Defending Education through a public records request, reads. “Our program will begin offering comprehensive, evidence-based, gender-affirming care services to our students and families who need them.”
The change meant that the group could now give hormone treatments to children, it explained. “While our School-based Health Centers have long offered a continuum of gender-affirming care services including supportive student counseling, promotion of social identity, and health education, this step will allow us to begin offering families access to important medical interventions including hormone treatments,” it states.
The offerings mark one of the boldest efforts to create what Manhattan Institute Fellow Leor Sapir has dubbed the “school-to-clinic pipeline” whereby young school children are encouraged to undergo irreversible medical interventions that seek to change their sex.
Neighborcare, which runs 14 different school-based clinics in Seattle Public Schools and Vashon Island School District, states that its mission is to “help students do better in school by working to address health concerns, prevent serious illness, and promote healthy lifestyles.” The clinic does not, however, openly admit to providing so-called “gender-affirming care,” which is conspicuously absent from its “services offered” list despite announcing that it would begin offering hormone therapies at some of its school-based clinics over a year ago.
The company official stated in the email that its foray into hormone treatment for children would initially be to a pilot program and that the administration of the irreversible drugs would only occur with parental approval.
“These services will be a small pilot available to students and families within the existing schools we serve,” the email went on to state, also noting that hormone therapy will only be administered to those who have the approval of parents or legal guardians.
The company defended its decision to offer cross-sex hormone therapy to children in a comment to The Daily Wire, claiming that it was a form of “life-saving care.”
“Gender-affirming care in its many forms represents life-saving care for many of the youth and their families who choose it,” spokeswoman Mary Schilder told The Daily Wire. “Neighborcare Health offers care for transgender and non-binary students that align with best practices defined by regional and national pediatric care authorities and is aimed at meeting needs expressed by the students and families we serve.”
Rhyen Staley, a researcher for Parents Defending Education, which obtained the documents through a public records request, called the administration of irreversible treatments to children in schools “unconscionable.”
“It is deeply concerning that the institutions Americans have traditionally trusted with keeping children healthy and safe are now giving them access to harmful medical practices,” Rhyen Staley, a researcher for Parents Defending Education, told The Daily Wire. “It is unconscionable that this is happening within the K-12 school setting.”
A separate email from an unidentified individual working in public health for Seattle and King County flagged the Neighborcare Health email to people associated with the Seattle Children’s Hospital and Seattle Schools.
“I know many of you are already providing different levels of care and support for your students around gender and I simply wanted to share this,” the email states, before pointing out that “there is the possibility of media interest” in the program.
Though medical institutions that turn a profit by administering irreversible cross-sex hormones to children claim that transgender medical interventions are “life-saving,” European countries to the left of the United States have recently restricted the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy. Sweden and England have both taken steps to limit the availability of medical interventions that seek to change the sex of patients. The Scandinavian country stopped hormone therapy for minors with few exceptions while England’s National Health Service stopped prescribing puberty blockers.
Some of the most vocal advocates in favor of administering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children actually receive funding from the very same pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the drugs that are given to children suffering from gender dysphoria, Daily Wire investigations have revealed.
Seattle Public Schools, which did not respond to a request for comment, has pushed medical gender transitions more blatantly than perhaps any other school district, but it is far from the only one to encourage children to undergo irreversible medical interventions intended to modify one’s sex.
The Daily Wire previously revealed that the Los Angeles Unified School District reached out to a transgender youth clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles after staff found out that a student was considering going on testosterone therapy. The district, which frequently pushes transgenderism on students through its lesson plans, book readings, and spirit day celebrations, had just recently hosted members of the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles to advertise the transgender clinic’s offerings to parents.
Conservative journalist and activist Chris Rufo revealed that public schools in Chicago teamed up with the Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago to promote pro-transgender curriculum and “gender-affirming” books aimed at children.