Six Wisconsin School Districts Provide UW Health’s Pediatric Transgender Clinic as Resource for Students

07/29/2025

Investigations

Issues: Sex and Gender

The University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics (UW Health) is a prominent hospital located on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. One clinic at UW Health is the Pediatric and Adolescent Transgender Health (PATH) clinic that offers services to children it refers to as “transgender, nonbinary, gender questioning and gender diverse.” The clinic promotes providing children with puberty suppression treatments and cross-sex hormones.

Defending Education found that six school districts within Wisconsin provide the UW Health’s PATH gender clinic as a resource for students and families.

The hospital appears to reference President Donald Trump’s actions to remove gender ideology from public schools by stating that “this is a hard time for many of our LBGTQ+ patients and families.” The clinic’s services include “observation, advocacy, and guidance to puberty suppression and gender-affirming hormone therapy.” UW Health explains that personalized support and treatments include “gender-affirming hormone therapy,” “hormone/puberty suppression,” “mental health counseling,” and “support services for kids and families.”

By providing a pediatric transgender clinic as a resource, these school districts have tacitly endorsed young children being able to socially, medically and surgically transition to another gender.

Nowhere on the website does the school district acknowledge that these medical treatments are largely permanent and irreversible.