Laura Edwards-Leeper

Career Edwards-Leeper started practicing psychology in 2007. Edwards-Leeper has worked as a professor at the School of Graduate Psychology at the Pacific University.

She is the first clinician to use a Dutch protocol of puberty-blocking transition (originated at the Center of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria) in the United States.

Stances on transgender youth Edwards-Leeper said in a 2024 New York Times interview that, in the beginning of her career, most of her patients had deep-seated and long-standing gender dysphoria, but that ceased to be the case in recent years, with many of her recent patients reporting no history of gender dysphoria. She further stated that, when treating young people who identify as transgender, "you have to take time to really assess what's going on and hear the timeline and get the parents' perspective in order to create an individualized treatment plan. Many providers are completely missing that step." "We cannot carry on in this field that involves permanently changing young people’s bodies if we don't fully understand what we're doing and learn from those we fail," she said in another interview.

When questioned by Lesley Stahl about whether gender psychologists accepted what young patients say too hastily, Edwards-Leeper stated that many professionals are afraid of speaking up and not being seen as gender affirming to or hurting the transgender community.