When Healing Becomes Resistance: Interrupting HIV Criminalization, BDNH Storytelling Project, Interrupting Criminalization (2025)

This zine was produced by the Beyond Do No Harm Network’s Storytelling Media Project and features stories by CHLP Senior PJP Attorney Jada Hicks and Tennessee Advocate Lashanda Salinas. The graphic short features Lashanda’s story about being criminalized because of her health status and how it upended her life. Jada provides context on Tennessee’s HIV criminalization laws and the efforts to overturn them. The zine also discusses work with the Tennessee HIV Modernization Coalition to advance reform and strengthen community organizing. The zine is illustrated by artist Kruttika Susarla. 

The larger series, Stories from Health Care Workers Interrupting Criminalization, features several of these firsthand stories told by people who are interrupting criminalization and illustrated by movement artists. The project centers storytelling as a tool for awareness, collective healing, and social change. 

The Beyond Do No Harm Network unites U.S.-based providers, public health workers, and advocates across justice movements to address how health systems and researchers contribute to criminalization. By documenting these lived experiences, their Storytelling Media Project underscores how sharing stories can challenge criminalization and support community-led paths toward healing and justice.