The children’s hospital that housed America’s largest pediatric gender clinic is seemingly distancing itself from its notorious medical director.
The Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles (CHLA) has removed the profile of Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the former medical director of its gender clinic, from its website. Olson-Kennedy had been prescribing children puberty blockers and cross sex hormones for 16 years, was a “national expert” in gender medicine and the medical director of the “largest transgender youth clinic in the United States,” according to her removed profile which was last saved in the internet archive on July 11. In addition to Olson-Kennedy’s profile removal, the webpage for the Olson-Kennedy research laboratory has been removed and she is no longer listed as an active provider in the hospital’s physician database.
Olson-Kennedy was the project leader of a long-term National Institute of Health (NIH) study on the mental health impacts of treating gender-confused children with puberty blockers. She controversially withheld the results of the study when the results showed puberty blockers did not improve mental health of gender-confused children out of fear the data would be “weaponized,” according to reporting in October 2024 by The New York Times. A preprint of the study was published in May 2025.
CHLA closed the doors of its Transyouth Health and Development clinic on July 22 in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order banning the use of federal funds to promote child sex-changes, according an archived message on its gender clinic website.
“Despite this deeply held commitment to supporting LA’s gender-diverse community, the hospital has been left with no viable path forward except to close the Center for Transyouth Health and Development, effective July 22, 2025,” the gender clinic stated on its website.
“Center team members were heartbroken to learn of the decision from hospital leaders, who emphasized that it was not made lightly, but followed a thorough legal and financial assessment of the increasingly severe impacts of recent administrative actions and proposed policies,” the message continued.
CHLA did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s multiple requests for confirmation of Olson-Kennedy’s employment status. Olson-Kennedy did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
Medical watchdog organization Do No Harm listed the CHLA gender clinic as one of the “12 worst-offending children’s hospitals promoting sex change treatments for minors” in its Stop The Harm database which provides information about the services provided at pediatric gender clinics across America.
“I think we’re saving a lot of children from a lot of harm,” Do No Harm Board Chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb told the DCNF.
“That’s what this is about. There’s no evidence that these maneuvers improve a child’s psychological well-being and there’s a lot of evidence that they’re harmful,” Goldfarb added.
CHLA was one of more than 20 hospital systems that have stopped providing child sex-change procedures in response to President’s Trump’s executive action that were identified in a July 25 press release from the White House.
Olson-Kennedy is being sued for medical malpractice by detransitioner Kaya Clementine Breen, who alleges in a lawsuit she was “fast-tracked” onto a “conveyor belt” of harmful sex-change interventions under Olson-Kennedy’s care at the CHLA gender clinic. Breen was given puberty blockers at age 12, cross-sex hormones at age 13 and a double mastectomy at age 14, according to her ongoing lawsuit that was filed in December 2024.
“Dr. Olson-Kennedy also recommended that [Breen] get a double mastectomy. Just as she had misled and coerced Clementine and her parents to start testosterone, Dr. Olson-Kennedy again misled them by emphasizing the supposed importance of getting such a radical procedure early,” states the lawsuit. “She represented that if Clementine got a double mastectomy at an early age, the healing process would be easier, and that if she waited any longer, it would be impossible to do it right,” the lawsuit continues.
Olson-Kennedy is a member of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH), a discredited medical organization that is currently being investigated by U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP). WPATH’s clinical guidance, called the Standards of Care, have been used by healthcare systems, governments and insurance companies to inform sex-change policies. The Trump administration has called WPATH’s medical guidance “junk science” that healthcare providers should avoid when treating patients.
“President Trump is delivering on his promise to protect children from dangerous gender transitions,” said Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the HELP Committee, in an Aug. 19 press release.
“As chair of the HELP Committee, I will continue to work with the President to stop the chemical and surgical mutilation of our children,” Cassidy added.
