Seattle students receive free gender-affirming care at school health centers.

Gender Affirming Care Offered at Seattle Public School Health Centers

Two student health centers at Seattle public schools offer free gender affirming care to middle and high schoolers.

The Nova Wellness Center is located in Nova High School, while the Meany Health Center is located in Meany Middle School. Both centers list gender affirming care as an available service.

They are operated by Country Doctor Community Health Centers, a local nonprofit that offers cross-sex hormones and gender surgery referrals.

Country Doctor provides medications like estrogen, androgen blockers, and testosterone, including hormone therapy for adolescents and specialty referrals for younger patients as needed.

“We do not provide puberty blockers at this time,” Country Doctor says.

The nonprofit also provides surgery referrals for genital and other gender surgeries and school health centers.”>helps obtain mental health letters of support for gender procedures and behavioral counseling.

“Our mission is to promote health in transgender, non-binary and gender diverse communities through ensuring equal access to gender-affirming medications and procedures, and training staff to be trauma-informed and culturally responsive,”

It’s unclear whether every service listed on Country Doctor Community Health Centers’ website is offered at the nonprofit’s two in-school health centers in Seattle.

Concerns Raised by Parents Defending Education

Parents Defending Education first sounded the alarm about the Seattle public school health centers offering transgender services to students.

The Nova Wellness Center states on the school’s official website, “The Nova Wellness Center offers no cost comprehensive, trauma-informed, and gender affirming care, conveniently at the school.”

The Meany Health Center also touts offering its medical and behavioral health services at no cost, conveniently at the school.

Both health centers say they bill services to insurance if students have it, and there are never any co-pays to worry about, but they also offer services to students and families without insurance.

The Meany Middle School health center also says it is partially funded through the Seattle government’s Family and Education Levy. The Nova High School health center says it is staffed by a full-time clinic administrator, medical providers, and a behavioral health specialist.

Both school health centers say they also offer reproductive health care as well.

Health Risks and Growing Trend

Cross-sex hormones come with serious health risks. They can cause infertility, deadly blood clots, heart attacks, increased cancer risks of the breasts and ovaries, liver dysfunction, worsening psychological illness, and other serious conditions.

Hundreds of teen girls in the U.S., some as young as 12, have gotten elective, gender-related double mastectomies to remove their healthy breasts over the last few years.

Meanwhile, it is more popular than ever for youth to adopt new gender identities. An estimated 300,000 minors aged 13 to 17 identified as transgender as of last year.

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