Study Reveals Low Rates Of Gender-Affirming Medication Prescriptions Among U.S. Minors

As policymakers around the world debate whether minors should have access to transition-related medications, a study published Monday in the nation’s premier pediatric medical journal found that the drugs are rarely prescribed to youths.

Less than 0.1% of adolescents with private insurance in the United States are transgender or gender-diverse and are prescribed puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormones, according to the findings published in JAMA Pediatrics.

“It’s really important for the public to understand that not everyone is getting access to gender-affirming care when they go to the doctor,” said the report’s lead author, Landon Hughes, a fellow at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “It’s not as ubiquitous as some may want us to believe, especially among youth.”

“There’s not some massive wave of folks accessing care,” Hughes added. “It is certainly a minuscule group of people who are getting access to this care, and it’s certainly eaten up a lot of the public discourse in the recent political, legal climate.”

The study found that the use of puberty blockers and hormones was more common among trans minors who were assigned female sex at birth versus those assigned male at birth. The authors noted that this may occur because the onset of puberty happens sooner for people assigned female at birth.

Puberty blockers are used to delay the onset of puberty or pause it as it is transpiring. The medication is designed to give children who are experiencing gender dysphoria more time to decide if they want to take more permanent steps to transition genders. Puberty resumes when the medication is no longer taken.

Gender-affirming hormones are typically prescribed to replace hormones that a person’s body naturally makes but that do not align with their gender identity.