North Cook News

Community Consolidated School District 15 parents are upset about the district’s relationship with a children’s hospital that promotes gender and sexuality education and training.

Shortly after an invoice from Ann and Robert Laurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago to the district was released that showed multiple groups of middle school teachers had received training seminars from the medical organization, the parents expressed their displeasure with the partnership. The children’s hospital provides lessons and discussions regarding sex, puberty, gender, and gender identity and sexuality. The hospital also offers courses for students and traveling seminars to be brought into classrooms, as well as seminars for parents or families of young students.

Shannon Adcock, founder of Awake Illinois, has continued to share her findings about the hospital, including tweets of possible lessons with a Dr. J Whitehead on pubertal suppression. The seminar, which was held in July of 2022, touched on the changes experienced in puberty, how to talk to children about puberty, what puberty blockers do, how to time blockers, and monitoring the effectiveness and potential side effects of blockers. District 15 paid a total of $3000 for lessons in gender and sexuality curriculum, as well as their puberty talk lessons.

"The more research I do on @LurieChildrens #Gender programs, the more my heart breaks for the kids & families being victimized by this harmful profiteering," Adcock said in a recent Twitter post. "This is 'inclusion', weaponized."

Whitehead graduated from the Emory University School of Medicine in 2015 and worked as a resident and fellow at Laurie’s Children’s Hospital in pediatrics, specializing in pediatric endocrinology, a Vitals report said. While in school at Emory, Whitehead served as president of the Emory Medical Alliance, a “student organization [that] provides support and community for classmates who identify as LGBTQ+” and “is dedicated not only to creating a visible community within the medical school, but also to educating all medical students to best serve the LGBTQ+ patient population.”

During her time with the club at Emory, Whitehead also signed a letter of support sent to their president and dean, requesting they end their relationship with the Chick-Fil-A brand because of its anti-LGBT stance.