Yesterday, Children’s National Health Center opened a new clinic specifically to provide health care and services for LGBTQ youth.

The Youth Pride Clinic, which is a part of the Adolescent Health Center at the Sheikh Zayed Campus for Advanced Pediatric Medicine, will “provide seamless primary and specialty care” for youth between the ages of 12 and 22 years-old who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning.

In a statement, Dr. Lawrence D. D’Angelo, the director of the Youth Pride Clinic and the Division Chief of Adolescent and Youth Adult Medicine, says that the clinic was created to address the “tremendous backlog of unmet need for the care” of LGBTQ youth. “We know that there are anywhere between three to 15 percent of youth in the District who self-identify as LGBTQ,” D’Angelo said.

But the Youth Pride Clinic isn’t just for the District’s LGBTQ youth population. Children’s National Health says that the clinic “fills a need” for referring physicians” throughout D.C. who “may have less experience in providing care to these patients” and want to refer them to a place for more specialized care.

“The clinic aims to address the health disparity that these youth have experienced in years, both not being able to talk about their sexuality and not being able to access the kind of healthcare that is most relevant to them,” Dr. D’Angelo said in a statement. “We’ll be providing care for not only the general health of these adolescents and young adults, but also for specific health problems that are more common in LGBTQ youth.”

LGBTQ youth patients, in addition to primary care services, will also have access to other specialized services at the hospital, such as mental health support. The Youth Pride Clinic will have appointment times available Tuesday through Thursday afternoons and Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. Those can be made by calling 202-476-5464.