Staff: Kelly Danckert, Meghan Guptill, Kathleen McCabe, Lex Vasquez, and Ben Wood
Across the United States, LGBTQ+ communities — especially transgender and gender diverse individuals — are facing an alarming surge in political attacks. From discriminatory legislation and program defunding to data erasure and surveillance, the conditions created by these policies go far beyond politics. They produce measurable harm to people’s physical, mental, social, and financial well-being. In 2025 alone, 616 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced nationwide.
Through the HRiA Innovation Incubator, we expanded the New Hampshire LGBTQ+ Landscape Analysis and Coalition Building Initiative to meet this moment. Our work supports a public health workbook and informs strategic responses to anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
Together in Partnership
In collaboration with a coalition of advocates, organizers, and 21 individual organizations in New Hampshire, this initiative centers safety, voice, and justice for LGBTQ+ communities. Our work asserts:
- Systemic anti-LGBTQ+ attacks are a public health emergency.
- Data collection practices must prioritize safety and privacy.
- Coalition-building is essential to shifting cultural norms and narratives to support LGBTQ+ lives.
Our approach includes:
- Landscape and Impact Assessment: We gather and analyze qualitative and quantitative data to document lived experiences and systemic consequences.
- Coalition Building: We support a diverse network of cross-sector partners in New Hampshire.
- These include elected officials, hospitals, healthcare, legal services, children/ family services, mental and behavioral health, lobbying, reproductive health and justice, LGBTQ+, youth, community, domestic violence, harm reduction, public health, arts, advocate, and faith organizations.
- Private businesses and individual advocates were also engaged as we developed shared strategies and community-rooted responses ahead of the legislative session.
- Power Mapping & Narrative Strategy: We help advocates identify levers for change and shift dominant narratives to affirm LGBTQ+ lives.
- Ethical Data Practices: We implement best practices for safe, affirming data collection in a climate of criminalization, surveillance, and erasure.
Key Insights to Date
Youth and trans/gender diverse individuals are most targeted. Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and rhetoric have largely targeted young people and trans and gender diverse people. These actions create concerns about the impact on the mental and physical well-being of these populations and contribute to increasingly less welcoming and unsafe environments for the community. In response, community members are considering or making major changes to their lives such as moving to new states or pursuing different professions.
Access to affirming care is uneven and shrinking. The availability of affirming and appropriate mental and physical health care for LGBTQ+ people is often dependent on geography and concentrated in urban, populous areas. These have been further limited by state and federal legislation and funding cuts. Measures to improve access should include training providers and investments in strategies to improve geographic availability (e.g., telehealth, mobile clinics, and transportation support).
Isolation is compounding harm. Challenges created by anti-LGTBQ+ rhetoric and legislation and cuts to LGBTQ+ serving programs and services are amplified by experiences of disconnection and isolation within the community. Now more than ever, people need spaces to connect, strategize, and heal.
Community-building is resistance. Investing in community building and support for “queer joy” are tools for building collective power and visibility and to counter the detrimental impacts of the current climate on individuals’ well-being.
Coalitions are essential to successful advocates. Coalitions are key to growing, sustaining, and strengthening LGBTQ+ rights through relational organizing and advocacy. Having a centralized organization or backbone entity to lead collective work can further coalition work by organizing and supporting advocacy efforts, being the hub for information sharing and messaging, and facilitating relationships with community members and funders.
Mapping is a powerful tool for advocates. Advocacy organizations benefit from mapping tools like the one we are building in Kumu to tell a story visually and create a shared understanding of the landscape as it exists now. Advocates can use them as practical tools for planning, organizing, and mobilizing partners across systems.
Collective funding strategies build support for advocates. Multiple funders pooling their resources to invest in a strategy is a powerful and effective tool to support advocates in this work. It allows the funders to better leverage their relationships and resources to support partners doing the work.
Next Steps
Our approach helps advocates plan, organize, and mobilize partners across systems. The HRiA Innovation Incubator funding allows our team to continue supporting the coalition of New Hampshire advocates to implement findings from the assessment. Currently, we are working with the coalition to stand up a backbone entity, which will be charged with organizing and connecting advocates, as well as leading the development of shared messaging and narrative strategy. This approach addresses multiple needs identified through our assessment.
We also recognize that public health organizations must evolve to meet this moment. At HRiA, we’ve begun adapting our data practices to better protect the privacy and well-being of vulnerable communities.