Adolescent Medicine

At Seattle Children’s, your family has a team behind you, from diagnosis through treatment and follow-up. From our pediatric nurses to our clinical providers, our team is specially trained to work with children, adolescents, young adults and their families.

Research shows that a person’s physical, emotional and social development during adolescence affects their health throughout their life.

Our providers have received specialized training in adolescent health and stay up-to-date on new developments in the field. This gives them a deeper understanding of the development that occurs during adolescence and into early adulthood. It helps us create a care plan that uniquely addresses your child’s development now and in the future.

Our team is involved in research that is transforming the diagnosis, treatment and care of medical and behavioral health issues affecting children, adolescents and young adults.

Some areas of expertise include integration of mental and behavioral health services, use of technology to improve adolescent health, gender-affirming care, services for youth in foster care or other underserved settings, substance use prevention, medical management of youth with eating disorders, biofeedback to manage chronic pain and stress and reproductive and sexual health.

Biofeedback is a technique that helps children, adolescents and young adults learn how to voluntarily control their body’s response to stress and pain to improve their health. Using breathing exercises, guided imagery and other techniques, patients can regulate their muscle tension, heart rate, skin temperature and other body functions to decrease chronic pain and manage their response to stress. In some cases, they may notice improvements in other symptoms, like sleeplessness, anxiety or lack of focus.

Eating disorder treatment with the Adolescent Medicine team addresses the medical and nutritional concerns related to disordered eating. Conditions we currently treat include:

• Anorexia nervosa and atypical anorexia nervosa
• Avoidant restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID)
• Bulimia nervosa
• Other specified feeding and eating disorders (OSFED)

We do not have psychologists or mental health therapists in our Adolescent Medicine clinic. We partner with mental health providers from Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine or from outside Seattle Children’s so your child receives the care they need.

At our Gender Clinic, we provide care for adolescents and young adults whose gender identity is different from their sex at birth and patients who do not identify with traditional definitions of male or female.

The Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology team treats conditions of the uterus, ovaries, vagina and vulva. Our team provides comprehensive evaluation and specialized treatment for gynecological conditions in children, adolescents and young adults. We often care for adolescents who are medically complex or may need surgical treatment.

Our Reproductive and Sexual Health team includes adolescent medicine specialists who offer medical evaluation and treatment of reproductive and sexual health conditions for patients of all genders ages 12 to 21, including:

• Menstrual management
• Contraception counseling
• Sexually transmitted infections

• Reproductive Health 101 (18:56): Dr. Kate Debiec shares information about how to talk to tweens and teens about reproductive health at a Teenology 101 forum.
• Social Media’s Influence on Teens (23:19): Dr. Yolanda Evans shares information about social media use and its influence on tweens and teens at a Teenology 101 forum.
• Wellness, What’s That? (23:37): Dr. Jasmin Zavala shares general health and wellness information at a Teenology 101 forum.