Erasing Queer Health Research Does Not Make Queer People Disappear

An analysis published in May 2025 describes how, starting January 20 of that year, a new U.S. administration moved to dismantle agencies funding healthcare and humanitarian aid globally, and to repeal policies supporting LGBTQI+ health equity both domestically and abroad — including cuts to research on health disparities affecting LGBTQI+ people in the United States and worldwide.

This may sound like an argument happening in government offices far away from your bedroom. It is not.

Researchers need demographic information to identify who is being diagnosed with HIV, who cannot obtain PrEP, who experiences violence, and which communities are being missed by healthcare systems.

When sexual orientation and gender identity disappear from surveys, queer people do not suddenly become healthier. We simply become harder to count.

As an openly queer nurse, I get frustrated when officials treat words like transgender, gay, or sexual orientation as political contamination. Those words describe patients. Removing them from research does not create neutral science. It creates blind spots.

Good data can be imperfect, invasive, or misused, so privacy protections matter. Still, eliminating queer data entirely gives policymakers an excuse to say there is no evidence of a problem.

We have survived being ignored before. I would prefer that public health stop making invisibility one of our required survival skills.

This is a fast-moving policy area — the specifics described here reflect the state of things as of this analysis's publication, and I'll update this post if the picture changes.