I am a Fenway Health patient. I had a long conversation with my PCP there this year about my fears of medicine being lost because of the administration. My PCP explicitly consoled me by saying that their new board member, Dallas Ducar, was hired to help find creative ways for all of their patients to retain access should the law turn. I feel very betrayed
All of us patients at Fenway just got a message ten minutes ago addressing this. It’s simultaneously understandable and infuriating; pretending like this will be the last threat to queer healthcare:
Dear Community,
I am writing to provide the entire Fenway Health community with an update that we recently shared directly with individuals under the age of 19, who receive medical gender-affirming care. Due to a change in federal requirements that took effect on October 1, 2025, Fenway Health will not provide medical gender-affirming care (hormones and puberty blockers) for patients under the age of 19.
We know that many of you have already heard this news and wanted to take the opportunity to share the background behind this difficult decision and the steps we took to support our impacted patients. Before I share more, I want to be clear that as a mission-based entity committed to providing inclusive care to the entire LGBTQIA community, we did not come to this decision lightly.
How did we get here? The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently issued a revised Grants Policy Statement which allows it to terminate a grant "for convenience" if it “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.” Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) recently released priorities that make clear that providing hormones and puberty blockers for patients under age 19 is no longer an HHS goal or priority.
What would it have meant to continue providing gender-affirming care given this policy change? If we continued the service, our status as a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) would have been at serious risk. Maintaining this designation is essential to our ability to continue providing high-quality, affordable care to more than 30,000 people across New England and beyond. Losing this status would significantly limit our ability to further serve the community we love as we have for decades.
How are we supporting impacted patients? Once it became clear that we would no longer be able to provide gender-affirming care (hormones and puberty blockers) for patients under the age of 19, we focused on a process for engaging directly with impacted patients and their families. We provided details on how they could continue to receive care not provided by Fenway with other entities not impacted by the revised grants policy statement and HRSA's priorities. These conversations were conducted with sensitivity and compassion for the unique challenge created by a change in trusted provider. We are grateful to the team members who led this important work, even as they navigated their own response to this policy change.
We know this news is heartbreaking to our entire community of patients, staff, clinical partners and supporters – we carry that with you. Please know: this change does not reflect our values, our belief that gender-affirming care saves lives, or our unwavering commitment to the transgender and gender-diverse community. It reflects a painful reality that we are working to change. All other services and care for patients of all ages and identities remain fully available and unchanged. We understand, hear, and respect that some in our community disagree with this decision. We reached it based on careful and difficult consideration of what we believe is best for our mission given our current options.
We continue to stand firmly with our transgender and gender-diverse patients, families, and community members. We are doing everything in our power to navigate a fast-moving policy and funding environment in a way that centers passion, respect, and continuity of care for everyone who depends on us. While our primary focus is on the direct care we provide our patients, we will continue our longstanding history of advocating for policies, funding, and access to a wide range of services that support the health and well-being of the LGBTQIA+ population, and all members of the community we serve.
These are unprecedented times. But we remain committed to walking through them together – with you. I acknowledge that our communication about this change fell short and caused confusion and concern. I am committed to improving how we communicate moving forward.
Fuuuuuuuck. This is beyond comprehension. My kids are both over 19 so unaffected (for today). But this is THE PLACE in Boston - heck, for anyone in MA or New England with the ability to get there. I am so pissed I’m shaking. I’ve had to re-type every word. 💔💔💔
For folks in the Boston area looking for alternatives, I highly recommend my hrt provider, Molly Nathanson at Syzygy Health in Framingham. Molly is non binary and formerly provided care at planned parenthood but currently runs their own trans centered practice, and will fight for you.
Of all fucking places... WHAT? I got a primary care practitioner there because I thought if there was going to be anyone who wouldn't throw us under the bus it would be THE gay hospital.
Vanessa, good for you! I just want to share this with you, as a survivor of seven years of litigation... it's worth it. It can be soul crushing, it can drain your reserves of resilience, emotional support, cash, but ultimately it's worth it to know that you FOUGHT BACK. That little voice we all have, the internal critic, the three-a.m.-thoughts, they will never be able to say you didn't TRY.
Not everyone can even make the attempt.
Be prepared for mind numbing idiocy permitted in both adjudication and practice, it was a shock to me how little facts, truth, and morality matter, in court the only thing that signifies is what you can demonstrate relative to statute and case law precedent.
I wish you the best of luck in Pennsylvania. All my 💜 to you.
Third, sack the board members or trustees who voted for this.
Fourthly, the new leadership must present an action plan in 48 hours in order to show they intend to guarantee all legal healthcare including transition and GAHT care for all patients of all ages in line with the best practices of the AMA, APA, the Endocrine Society of America, US PATH, and as legally required under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act 2010 and in compliance with the Massachusetts constitution.
Anything less and they are doing more harm than good to ALL THEIR PATIENTS.
I don't like making it about age, yeah, this is egregious, anyone who's entering puberty is old enough to begin treatment, and 16-and-17-year-old people are old enough to potentially do any GAC available. I say so, so it should be so. Fuck Donald Trump's attempt to erase our people. We'll never back down, you're a warrior Erin and so am I.
And 16-17 year old cisgender people can and do take all manner of hormonal and steroidal therapies, cosmetic facial surgery, breast reduction, breast enhancement, buttlifts, rhinoplasty, lip infills, tummy tucks, lipo, Botox, gynecomastia surgery, and THEY don't even have to go through months or years of therapy and diagnosis FIRST just to get the letters and recommendations required as part of the Trans medical gatekeeping process AND insurance covers most if not all of it.
But we never hear about that from these professional transphobe politicians supposedly "concerned about youth and their choices".
When politicians become doctors, and doctors becoming irrelevant, quietly fading away along with constitutional protections of all our inborn human rights.
There's that "under 19" again. There is no way this is just a random choice. They are trying to move the Overton window to get us to say "actually, limiting adults' personal choices is OK," by doing it in a way that MOSTLY falls under the cloak of appearing to be about minors.
I find it extremely infuriating that the grinning fascists think we're all so stupid we don't realize 19 is the gateway to 21, 21 is the stepping stone to 26, and then a full federal ban on all healthcare for all transgender Americans of all ages. They genuinely believe they're being so clever, so witty, so strategic about their grotty little plans to genocide us, as if we haven't been watching them work towards this goal for an entire DECADE.
That arrogance, the ignorance alloyed with impudence, the mischievous side of the banality of evil, it reminds me of the German phrase "Backpfeifengesicht", or "a face in need of a fist". I think this colloquialism is remarkably self-explanatory and oh so timely today as in the 1920s-1930s.
Yup. But I am so weary of hearing centrist Dems explain away evidence like this, claiming Republicans are just using us as campaign fodder, they aren't really going to genocide us, and I'm sick of it. What more evidence could they possibly WANT? It's almost as though Democrats are going to pretend nothing is happening so that at no point will they be obligated to defend us or any other god-damnned position they've ever held, in which case, they're god-damned useless and feckless.
If an FQHC loses its federal grant, it’s effectively closing its doors. And then even more vulnerable people are out of care. I am connected to some higher ups at a local FQHC and their absolute best intentions are being massively shook by the actions of this administration.💔
Justifying abusing transgender children in order to protect more vulnerable people is sick. It's also what liberals keep doing to trans people as a whole. It is literally irreparable harm to take away or deny gender affirming care to trans youth. No amount of surgery will ever give you back what you lost.
The first capitulation makes the next one easier. The more times they do this, the less likely they'll ever say no. They've already banned care for adults, since 18-year-olds are legally adults. There is no reason they won't keep bumping that age up. If we can justify sacrificing trans kids to the exact kinds of traumas we as trans adults had to suffer through untreated, then they'll be justifying us next when we're on the chopping block. When will Fenway and hospitals like it push back? IUD's? PrEP?
Exactly. That's always the Trump and fascist strategy. The gateway compromise betraying democratic due process and the rule of law is often the most difficult but NEVER the last. This is the "flooding the zone" and "winning" GOPMAGAs love to yodel and chortle about. And we cannot ever let healthcare providers, liberals, Democrats forget this... talking to the Seth Moultons, Gavin Newsoms, and John Fettermans here especially!
And it's no secret.
Project 2025's 923 pages carefully preview this strategy for dismantling the state and federal administrative state and replacing it with rule by fiat via an omnipotent unitary executive-slash-god emperor.
It's all about moral compromise in order to create a permanent collapse of ethical and moral governance to enable extreme Christian nationalist theocracy...in order to impose THEIR "morality".
They LOST in "the free marketplace of ideas", a la John Stuart Mills and John Milton, and now seek to impose what they couldn't get any other way by raw, corrupt, fascistic power and brute force.
Forcing this to a head means there's an actual fight. It's the only outcome that ends in trans kids getting care. Instead we're just waiting for them to drop the rest of us now. If they can reach into blue states to hurt our kids, they can reach in to hurt our adults. By complying in advance they have simply guaranteed that the unjust man will take another step back then demand them to meet him in the middle.
Better that they go down fighting than be chipped away at by our illegal federal government. Next they’ll be told there will be no federal dollars to any health center that treats gays and lesbians. Wake up Fenway - the state of MA is in fighting mode.
I worked for FQHC years ago, excellent community service, some in Houston started out as HIV clinics, now they serve so much more. I get it. Yes, this administration is screwing the marginalized population, any way it can. 😡😡😡
I was told by my source that the conversations have been increasingly frantic since earlier this October, when the main FQHC grant was found to have added a phrase that federal grants could be revoked at any time for “convenience.” 💔
Also trust that the AGs are involved, heavily. Just, awful, all around. And as the mom of a nonbinary prepubertal kid, trust that I hate that trans kids are the sacrificial lamb.
Indeed. It's a "soft' genocide of transgender and gender diverse, intersex, queer, immigrant, chronically ill, and poor Americans. Maybe no industrial crematoria and massive lime pits for the cremains...yet...but private for profit incarceral firms are building internment camps on spec across Florida, Louisiana, and Texas right now.
Whether in a "soft" or "hard" genocide, the end result is the same; assimilate, emigrate, or DIE.
Yes. Loss of the FQHC qualifications means reduced Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement, loss of Title X funding, reduction or denial of access to federal pharmaceutical reduced pricing programs like 340B, reduced or loss of funding for substance abuse treatment funds from SAMHSA, loss of cost support for vaccinations, and reduced access to continuum of care/referrals for wraparound case management programs important for holistic care, from Section 8 to SNAP.
It might not close the doors but a 30-40% hole in a nonprofit budget is a helluva tough nut to swallow no matter what assets or reserves they might have.
I’m a Democrat, 72 years in age, and a mom to an adult transgender child. I do NOT want any member of the LGBTQIA2S+ community harmed in any way. I cannot wrap my head around the cruelty of this fucking administration nor the lack of balls by those who should be standing arm in arm calling for an end to this bullshit.
Terrible news, but thanks for reporting it. I would like to see the MA AG bring legal action and criminal charges if possible against the hospital for denying care to patients. Is there a recommended way to influence a push in that direction? Providers should be on notice that they risk crippling legal consequences before they do things like this.
I am a Fenway Health patient. I had a long conversation with my PCP there this year about my fears of medicine being lost because of the administration. My PCP explicitly consoled me by saying that their new board member, Dallas Ducar, was hired to help find creative ways for all of their patients to retain access should the law turn. I feel very betrayed
I'm so sorry that they failed you.
All of us patients at Fenway just got a message ten minutes ago addressing this. It’s simultaneously understandable and infuriating; pretending like this will be the last threat to queer healthcare:
Dear Community,
I am writing to provide the entire Fenway Health community with an update that we recently shared directly with individuals under the age of 19, who receive medical gender-affirming care. Due to a change in federal requirements that took effect on October 1, 2025, Fenway Health will not provide medical gender-affirming care (hormones and puberty blockers) for patients under the age of 19.
We know that many of you have already heard this news and wanted to take the opportunity to share the background behind this difficult decision and the steps we took to support our impacted patients. Before I share more, I want to be clear that as a mission-based entity committed to providing inclusive care to the entire LGBTQIA community, we did not come to this decision lightly.
How did we get here? The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently issued a revised Grants Policy Statement which allows it to terminate a grant "for convenience" if it “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.” Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) recently released priorities that make clear that providing hormones and puberty blockers for patients under age 19 is no longer an HHS goal or priority.
What would it have meant to continue providing gender-affirming care given this policy change? If we continued the service, our status as a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) would have been at serious risk. Maintaining this designation is essential to our ability to continue providing high-quality, affordable care to more than 30,000 people across New England and beyond. Losing this status would significantly limit our ability to further serve the community we love as we have for decades.
How are we supporting impacted patients? Once it became clear that we would no longer be able to provide gender-affirming care (hormones and puberty blockers) for patients under the age of 19, we focused on a process for engaging directly with impacted patients and their families. We provided details on how they could continue to receive care not provided by Fenway with other entities not impacted by the revised grants policy statement and HRSA's priorities. These conversations were conducted with sensitivity and compassion for the unique challenge created by a change in trusted provider. We are grateful to the team members who led this important work, even as they navigated their own response to this policy change.
We know this news is heartbreaking to our entire community of patients, staff, clinical partners and supporters – we carry that with you. Please know: this change does not reflect our values, our belief that gender-affirming care saves lives, or our unwavering commitment to the transgender and gender-diverse community. It reflects a painful reality that we are working to change. All other services and care for patients of all ages and identities remain fully available and unchanged. We understand, hear, and respect that some in our community disagree with this decision. We reached it based on careful and difficult consideration of what we believe is best for our mission given our current options.
We continue to stand firmly with our transgender and gender-diverse patients, families, and community members. We are doing everything in our power to navigate a fast-moving policy and funding environment in a way that centers passion, respect, and continuity of care for everyone who depends on us. While our primary focus is on the direct care we provide our patients, we will continue our longstanding history of advocating for policies, funding, and access to a wide range of services that support the health and well-being of the LGBTQIA+ population, and all members of the community we serve.
These are unprecedented times. But we remain committed to walking through them together – with you. I acknowledge that our communication about this change fell short and caused confusion and concern. I am committed to improving how we communicate moving forward.
With care and solidarity,
Jordina Shanks
CEO, Fenway Health
Fuuuuuuuck. This is beyond comprehension. My kids are both over 19 so unaffected (for today). But this is THE PLACE in Boston - heck, for anyone in MA or New England with the ability to get there. I am so pissed I’m shaking. I’ve had to re-type every word. 💔💔💔
For folks in the Boston area looking for alternatives, I highly recommend my hrt provider, Molly Nathanson at Syzygy Health in Framingham. Molly is non binary and formerly provided care at planned parenthood but currently runs their own trans centered practice, and will fight for you.
seconded on molly. she's wonderful
Of all fucking places... WHAT? I got a primary care practitioner there because I thought if there was going to be anyone who wouldn't throw us under the bus it would be THE gay hospital.
The Fenway Board and top management should resign.
It's a violation of State law. Sue the bastards into the ground. It's what I'm doing in Pennsylvania.
Vanessa, good for you! I just want to share this with you, as a survivor of seven years of litigation... it's worth it. It can be soul crushing, it can drain your reserves of resilience, emotional support, cash, but ultimately it's worth it to know that you FOUGHT BACK. That little voice we all have, the internal critic, the three-a.m.-thoughts, they will never be able to say you didn't TRY.
Not everyone can even make the attempt.
Be prepared for mind numbing idiocy permitted in both adjudication and practice, it was a shock to me how little facts, truth, and morality matter, in court the only thing that signifies is what you can demonstrate relative to statute and case law precedent.
I wish you the best of luck in Pennsylvania. All my 💜 to you.
Fuck Fenway.
First, sack the CEO.
Second, sack the CLC and CCO.
Third, sack the board members or trustees who voted for this.
Fourthly, the new leadership must present an action plan in 48 hours in order to show they intend to guarantee all legal healthcare including transition and GAHT care for all patients of all ages in line with the best practices of the AMA, APA, the Endocrine Society of America, US PATH, and as legally required under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act 2010 and in compliance with the Massachusetts constitution.
Anything less and they are doing more harm than good to ALL THEIR PATIENTS.
I called and left a voice message - told them I was disgusted and that they should all be ashamed of themselves.
617.267.0900
Omg I worked there many years ago and never imagined they would harm their trans patients. I am saddened and sickened.
I don't like making it about age, yeah, this is egregious, anyone who's entering puberty is old enough to begin treatment, and 16-and-17-year-old people are old enough to potentially do any GAC available. I say so, so it should be so. Fuck Donald Trump's attempt to erase our people. We'll never back down, you're a warrior Erin and so am I.
Yes!
And 16-17 year old cisgender people can and do take all manner of hormonal and steroidal therapies, cosmetic facial surgery, breast reduction, breast enhancement, buttlifts, rhinoplasty, lip infills, tummy tucks, lipo, Botox, gynecomastia surgery, and THEY don't even have to go through months or years of therapy and diagnosis FIRST just to get the letters and recommendations required as part of the Trans medical gatekeeping process AND insurance covers most if not all of it.
But we never hear about that from these professional transphobe politicians supposedly "concerned about youth and their choices".
Well said.
Amen.
When politicians become doctors, and doctors becoming irrelevant, quietly fading away along with constitutional protections of all our inborn human rights.
There's that "under 19" again. There is no way this is just a random choice. They are trying to move the Overton window to get us to say "actually, limiting adults' personal choices is OK," by doing it in a way that MOSTLY falls under the cloak of appearing to be about minors.
Exactly so.
I find it extremely infuriating that the grinning fascists think we're all so stupid we don't realize 19 is the gateway to 21, 21 is the stepping stone to 26, and then a full federal ban on all healthcare for all transgender Americans of all ages. They genuinely believe they're being so clever, so witty, so strategic about their grotty little plans to genocide us, as if we haven't been watching them work towards this goal for an entire DECADE.
That arrogance, the ignorance alloyed with impudence, the mischievous side of the banality of evil, it reminds me of the German phrase "Backpfeifengesicht", or "a face in need of a fist". I think this colloquialism is remarkably self-explanatory and oh so timely today as in the 1920s-1930s.
... and as if they haven't been caught on tape straight-up ADMITTING that banning gender-affirming care for everyone of all ages is their endgame:
https://michiganadvance.com/2024/01/28/michigan-and-ohio-gop-legislators-discuss-endgame-of-banning-all-trans-health-care/
Yup. But I am so weary of hearing centrist Dems explain away evidence like this, claiming Republicans are just using us as campaign fodder, they aren't really going to genocide us, and I'm sick of it. What more evidence could they possibly WANT? It's almost as though Democrats are going to pretend nothing is happening so that at no point will they be obligated to defend us or any other god-damnned position they've ever held, in which case, they're god-damned useless and feckless.
Just wrote to their board here: communityfeedback@fenwayhealth.org.
This is sad and horrible. I guess the FQHC monies are more valuable than ethical treatments for folks.
Is this country capable of recovering from the destruction this 🤡 administration is doing?
If an FQHC loses its federal grant, it’s effectively closing its doors. And then even more vulnerable people are out of care. I am connected to some higher ups at a local FQHC and their absolute best intentions are being massively shook by the actions of this administration.💔
Justifying abusing transgender children in order to protect more vulnerable people is sick. It's also what liberals keep doing to trans people as a whole. It is literally irreparable harm to take away or deny gender affirming care to trans youth. No amount of surgery will ever give you back what you lost.
I don’t disagree. But to some extent it’s a Sophie’s choice, imo. Horrendous.
The first capitulation makes the next one easier. The more times they do this, the less likely they'll ever say no. They've already banned care for adults, since 18-year-olds are legally adults. There is no reason they won't keep bumping that age up. If we can justify sacrificing trans kids to the exact kinds of traumas we as trans adults had to suffer through untreated, then they'll be justifying us next when we're on the chopping block. When will Fenway and hospitals like it push back? IUD's? PrEP?
Exactly. That's always the Trump and fascist strategy. The gateway compromise betraying democratic due process and the rule of law is often the most difficult but NEVER the last. This is the "flooding the zone" and "winning" GOPMAGAs love to yodel and chortle about. And we cannot ever let healthcare providers, liberals, Democrats forget this... talking to the Seth Moultons, Gavin Newsoms, and John Fettermans here especially!
And it's no secret.
Project 2025's 923 pages carefully preview this strategy for dismantling the state and federal administrative state and replacing it with rule by fiat via an omnipotent unitary executive-slash-god emperor.
It's all about moral compromise in order to create a permanent collapse of ethical and moral governance to enable extreme Christian nationalist theocracy...in order to impose THEIR "morality".
They LOST in "the free marketplace of ideas", a la John Stuart Mills and John Milton, and now seek to impose what they couldn't get any other way by raw, corrupt, fascistic power and brute force.
And if the feds pull the FQHC funding over refusal to comply, then the trans kids don’t get care anyways.
I’m not saying I agree with Fenway’s decision. But I am saying that based on my conversations with some people in another FQHC, I understand it.
Forcing this to a head means there's an actual fight. It's the only outcome that ends in trans kids getting care. Instead we're just waiting for them to drop the rest of us now. If they can reach into blue states to hurt our kids, they can reach in to hurt our adults. By complying in advance they have simply guaranteed that the unjust man will take another step back then demand them to meet him in the middle.
Better that they go down fighting than be chipped away at by our illegal federal government. Next they’ll be told there will be no federal dollars to any health center that treats gays and lesbians. Wake up Fenway - the state of MA is in fighting mode.
I worked for FQHC years ago, excellent community service, some in Houston started out as HIV clinics, now they serve so much more. I get it. Yes, this administration is screwing the marginalized population, any way it can. 😡😡😡
I was told by my source that the conversations have been increasingly frantic since earlier this October, when the main FQHC grant was found to have added a phrase that federal grants could be revoked at any time for “convenience.” 💔
Also trust that the AGs are involved, heavily. Just, awful, all around. And as the mom of a nonbinary prepubertal kid, trust that I hate that trans kids are the sacrificial lamb.
Indeed. It's a "soft' genocide of transgender and gender diverse, intersex, queer, immigrant, chronically ill, and poor Americans. Maybe no industrial crematoria and massive lime pits for the cremains...yet...but private for profit incarceral firms are building internment camps on spec across Florida, Louisiana, and Texas right now.
Whether in a "soft" or "hard" genocide, the end result is the same; assimilate, emigrate, or DIE.
Yes. Loss of the FQHC qualifications means reduced Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement, loss of Title X funding, reduction or denial of access to federal pharmaceutical reduced pricing programs like 340B, reduced or loss of funding for substance abuse treatment funds from SAMHSA, loss of cost support for vaccinations, and reduced access to continuum of care/referrals for wraparound case management programs important for holistic care, from Section 8 to SNAP.
It might not close the doors but a 30-40% hole in a nonprofit budget is a helluva tough nut to swallow no matter what assets or reserves they might have.
I’m a Democrat, 72 years in age, and a mom to an adult transgender child. I do NOT want any member of the LGBTQIA2S+ community harmed in any way. I cannot wrap my head around the cruelty of this fucking administration nor the lack of balls by those who should be standing arm in arm calling for an end to this bullshit.
Thank you for being THAT Mama Bear!! We need y'all!
Terrible news, but thanks for reporting it. I would like to see the MA AG bring legal action and criminal charges if possible against the hospital for denying care to patients. Is there a recommended way to influence a push in that direction? Providers should be on notice that they risk crippling legal consequences before they do things like this.
Maybe write to your MA legislators?