As a primary care provider, you are often the first point of contact for trans and gender diverse (TGD) adolescents and their families as they navigate questions about identity and health.
Many providers, however, feel unprepared for these conversations. The Canadian Paediatric Society (2023) notes that providers often “lack knowledge, training, and comfort in how to care for this population.” This gap directly impacts adolescents. According to Trans PULSE Canada (2021), 77 per cent of TGD youth reported having a primary healthcare provider, yet nearly half (47 per cent) said they had at least one unmet healthcare need in the previous year.
For some TGD adolescents, affirming care includes medical options like puberty suppression. Developing competency in this area is essential to closing the knowledge gap and delivering equitable, affirming care.
What Are Puberty Blockers?
Puberty blockers, or GnRH analogues, are medications that temporarily pause the physical changes of puberty. Despite the ideologically driven misinformation, this is a standard treatment with a long-established safety profile, having been used for decades in cisgender children with precocious (early onset) puberty.
For both cisgender and transgender adolescents, the goal is the same: to delay distressing and permanent physiological changes. This allows a young person to mature in a way that aligns with their most authentic sense of self.
Why Is This Important?
For a youth experiencing gender incongruence, the key benefit is time. Puberty suppression provides crucial time for identity exploration, authentic gender expression, and informed decision-making about future care. This all happens without the pressure of undergoing permanent, unwanted physical changes.
Research shows that TGD youth face elevated risks for depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm and suicide. Affirming care, including puberty suppression, helps mitigate these risks (Canadian Paediatric Society, 2023).
Goals of Puberty Suppression
This intervention is about providing time, clarity and relief. Its goals are to:
- Provide time for identity exploration
- Alleviate gender dysphoria
- Allow for an authentic social transition (e.g., changing name, pronouns, clothing and hair)
- Reduce the need for future surgeries (e.g., preventing breast development can eliminate the need for top surgery)
- Enable lower, safer doses of gender-affirming hormones later, if chosen
To equip primary care providers in Ontario with the necessary skills and knowledge, we are offering the course Puberty Suppression for Trans Youth in Primary Health Care on February 26, 2026. This session will prepare participants to initiate and monitor puberty suppression for TGD adolescents.
Register today to secure your spot and enhance your capacity to provide this important care.
Key Facts About Puberty Suppression
Reversible: The effects of puberty suppression are not permanent. When treatment is paused or stopped, puberty resumes.
Established Use: This is not a new treatment. GnRH analogues have been used safely for cisgender children with precocious puberty since the 1980s, and for supporting TGD youth since the 1990s.
Mental Health: Research consistently links access to puberty suppression with improved wellbeing and reduced anxiety, depression, and self-harm.
Informed Consent: The process requires that a young person has begun puberty and demonstrates the capacity to understand the treatment, its benefits and its limitations, which is the standard approach in Ontario, including for minors.