The Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting, a major U.S. pediatric conference, is hosting a panel on transgender youth healthcare. The conference's sole panel on trans health is affiliated with Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), a group that opposes gender-affirming care. SEGM promotes widely-criticized and disproven ideas like the social contagion theory, conversion therapy, and banning medical transition until the age of 25. SEGM is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ hate group. One of the panelists, Moti Gorin, is responsible for co-authoring a Trump HHS report on transgender healthcare that advocated for eradicating gender affirming care.

Medical conferences shape how doctors are trained and how policy is developed. Major US medical associations like American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association all support gender-affirming care as evidence-based and medically necessary for transgender youth. In contrast, groups like SEGM promote approaches that many major medical organizations say:

• Misrepresent or selectively use research.
• Downplay benefits of gender-affirming care.
• Encourage restrictive or “exploratory” approaches, often linked to conversion therapy.

When perspectives like this are elevated in medical settings, it can influence provider decisions, feed into policies that restrict care, and harm children's physical and mental health.

With trans youth care under attack across the country, it is more important than ever that pediatricians, scientists, and their allies stand up and fight back for evidence based care- not fear mongering or conversion therapy.