The Closure of Identity Alaska Underscores the Need for Queer-Focused Care

Medical professional in blue scrubs with a rainbow badge and stethoscope around their neck. — Image Credit: Nadzeya Haroshka on iStock

In May 2026, a mere year before the 50th anniversary of its founding, Identity Alaska shuttered its doors. The only health clinic dedicated to the queer community in the state of Alaska was closing. Among the reasons for closing, the nonprofit organization’s press release listed mounting financial challenges and “stress and strain on staff.”

As Identity Alaska’s former executive director, Tom Pittman, told Alaska Public Radio about the “jarring” closure, “There’s a lot of grief that the community is going to feel. This is such a critical resource and not having it will be painful.”

Failure to Receive Payments

The closure of the Alaskan clinic comes at a difficult time for the queer community at large. NPQ about expanding, wide-ranging legislative attacks on LGBTQI+ people across the country.

Identity Alaska struggled “with the pressures of running the clinic under a presidential administration hostile to LGBTQI+ people.”

The Trump administration has specifically targeted transgender individuals through executive orders, but as NPQ reported in June, “Dozens of states are advancing restrictive laws that affect the daily lives of transgender people.” Several states have followed the lead of Kansas, which passed a law in February revoking gender marker corrections, thus invalidating driver’s licenses and birth certificates and leaving close to 1,000 Kansans undocumented.

NPQ also wrote that “the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies have led to multiple hospitals across the nation ending their gender-affirming care programs for minors. In some cases, hospitals have stopped care for adults as well.”

According to Alaska Public Radio, Identity Alaska struggled “with the pressures of running the clinic under a presidential administration hostile to LGBTQI+ people.” The clinic was also dealing with extreme delays in Medicaid payments, failing to receive about half of the payments it should have received for care, which created “an immediate and ongoing cash flow crisis,” according to their Board of Directors.

A rule proposed by the Trump administration sought to further prohibit Medicaid reimbursement for care provided to trans patients under the age of 18, but that was struck down earlier this year after 21 states sued. NPR reported that “an additional proposed rule would go even further, blocking all Medicaid and Medicare funding for any services at hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care.” That rule is pending, after comments closed in February 2026.

“LGBTQI+ adults were more than twice as likely as non-LGBTQI+ adults to report that they had ‘postponed or not tried to get needed medical care’.”

In June, the Cleveland Clinic became the second major US hospital system, after Texas Children’s Hospital, to agree, under pressure from the US Department of Justice, to fund de-transition services, which can range from the cessation of hormone treatment to reversing previous surgeries. As part of a $2 million settlement with the US Department of Justice, the Cleveland Clinic must also stop providing gender-affirming care for pediatric patients for a period of two decades. This is in addition to an Ohio state law already limiting such care. The Cleveland Clinic still provides gender-affirming care to adult patients.

Importance of Queer Clinics

The closure of Identity Alaska underscores the importance of health facilities focused on the queer community.

LGBTQI+ patients face discrimination in the healthcare system and increased barriers to care, including affordability and accessibly, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. A 2022 report from the Center for American Progress found that “LGBTQI+ adults were more than twice as likely as non-LGBTQI+ adults to report that they had ‘postponed or not tried to get needed medical care’ when sick or injured because they could not afford it (36 percent compared with 17 percent).”

This disparity also extends to preventative care, including screenings for HIV, sexually transmitted diseases, cholesterol, and high blood pressure. Identity Alaska had provided such screenings to patients routinely.

It’s also important to note the care the clinic offered was trauma-informed. Queer people report much higher rates of adverse experiences in childhood such as physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, as recorded by multiple studies. A 2022 study by researchers from the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt University found that 83 percent of the 3,000 LGBQ people surveyed had experienced such abuse. The Trevor Project’s 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found that over 50 percent of queer youth enrolled in school reported being bullied in-person or online in the past year.

“This is not only the closure of an organization. It is the loss of a long-standing piece of community infrastructure that so many people helped build and sustain.”

LGBTQI+ adults also face higher rates of abuse than heterosexuals. A February 2025 report from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that LGBTQI+ people in the United States were five times more likely to experience violence than people from non-queer communities.

Identity Alaska, which was founded in 1977 as a community gathering space (then called the Alaska Gay Community Center), provided gender affirming care. But that was only one aspect of the nonprofit clinic, which also offered mental health services, primary care, medication management, and preventative screenings. It merged with Full Spectrum Health in 2020 to expand its health care offerings. Before the closure, a second clinic had been planned in Spokane, WA. That clinic will close now too.

As Pittman wrote in an open letter to patients and supporters, “Identity’s story has always been a community story. That is what makes this moment so painful. This is not only the closure of an organization. It is the loss of a long-standing piece of community infrastructure that so many people helped build and sustain.”

The Need for Community

Following the closure of the physical clinic, Identity Alaska continued to serve patients through telehealth until May 1. For several weeks, providers assisted with medication refills and referrals to new practices.

It isn’t easy for patients to find new healthcare, particularly in the state of Alaska, which has dealt with cuts thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and lapsed ObamaCare subsidies. Much of the state is designated as medically underserved, and when health needs are more specific—for example, needing gender affirming or trauma-informed care—options are even more limited.

As another gender affirming telemedicine service QueerDoc wrote upon the news of the closure, “This is what healthcare inequity looks like in real time.”

Pittman added in his letter that “the need for this care has not gone away. The need for community has not gone away. The need for spaces built with dignity, safety, and lived understanding has not gone away.”