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“Last year, “just for our small clinic, we saw over 200 people from out-of-state,” says Family Tree executive director Annie Van Avery.”

“Children’s Minnesota has also seen an influx, with a 30% increase in calls to its gender health program and the hospital has hired more clinicians to help. One Minneapolis pediatrician told NPR he personally treats 15 trans patients who travel in from out-of-state.”

Across town, Dr. Kade Goepferd, a pediatrician who runs the gender health program at Children’s Minnesota, says a lot of their patients’ families have ended up moving to the state, rather than travel in periodically for appointments.

“They’re now Minnesotans,” Goepferd says. “Knowing that they were going to [move], they called and got themselves on our waiting list ahead of time.” Even after hiring more clinical staff, the wait for the program is still about a year long.

For families with young kids, like 5-year-olds who are already strongly expressing a transgender or nonbinary identity, it is possible to wait many months until an appointment because gender-affirming care at that age is just talking.

“We have some families who will call us with their kids that young to find out, ‘How do I talk to grandparents? Should they pick out their clothes? What if they are asking to be called a different name — how do we handle that?’ So they’re just looking for support,” Goepferd says.

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/10/24/nx-s1-5164456/minnesota-trans-kids-health-care-clinics



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