NH’s Multi-Tiered System of Supports for Behavioral Health and Wellness (MTSS-B) is a framework that helps provide behavioral health support to our students. The three tiers of this system work together to ensure that all kids in our public schools are given positive behavioral expectations. Some children can benefit from Tier 2, which simply means they will receive coping support and skill building. This can help children who are struggling in school. The kids with the highest needs have access to individualized behavioral health services through local community health care partners. There will always be some children who need more supports to be successful, and this is a thoughtful and impactful way of helping those children. MTSS-B can reduce exclusionary practices like suspension and expulsion. It can improve instructional time by decreasing disruptive behaviors in the classroom, and it can increase academic success. This initiative had bipartisan support and was signed into law by a republican governor just a few short years ago. I am not sure why this committee is considering ending the Multi-Tiered System of Supports before we see the impact it could have on our students. Please give this framework a chance to make a difference. Please vote ITL on this bill.
HB1317
House · 2026 sessionDemocraticDied in HousePatient data privacy protections
AIProhibits state agencies, political subdivisions, contractors, vendors, and grant recipients from collecting, maintaining, or disclosing personally identifiable medical, disability, or mental health data to the federal government or third parties, with limited exceptions permitted under state and federal law.
relative to patient privacy protections.
Status
Died on the table in the House · March 5, 2026- ✓Introduced
- ✕House
- Senate
- Governor
- Law
Division of testimony
111 submissions
None of these changes included in this bill reduce the real-world obligations schools must meet. Standards still apply. Students still need services. Transportation, staffing, and instructional needs do not disappear. When the legal definition of adequacy is narrowed or blurred while obligations remain, the pressure does not go away. It shifts, most often onto local property taxpayers, increasing inequities between communities with very different tax bases.
2/11/26 Good afternoon members of the Health and Human Services Committee. My name is Mo Baxley from Granite State Independent Living. We are a statewide organization whose mission is to promote quality of life with independence for people with disabilities. I am testifying on HB1317. This bill seeks to protect medical privacy for New Hampshire citizens. This bill is needed to protect people from intrusive violations of privacy regarding their medical records. We live in a world where technology is changing more rapidly than our laws and protections. In this data driven world we need to be proactive about protecting our most personal data. The NH disability community has real reason to fear the sharing of information that can be monetized in an exploitive manner to their detriment. In the past this information was weaponized against people with disabilities and led to such practices as forced sterilization, prohibition on marriage and social stigmatizing. The New Hampshire Constitution grants the right to privacy of information stating, “An individual's right to live free from governmental intrusion in private or personal information is natural, essential, and inherent”. Thank you for your service to our state. Mo Baxley
Patient privacy is extremely important and must be protected.
I strongly oppose HB 1372. Reestablishing a state psychiatric hospital for long-term institutionalization is not a forward-thinking mental health solution—it is a step backward toward a failed and harmful model of care. For decades, this country has worked to move away from warehousing people with severe mental illness in large state institutions. Those facilities were historically underfunded, isolated, and rife with abuse, neglect, and civil rights violations. The solution to today’s mental health crisis is not to rebuild what we dismantled—it is to finally fund and strengthen the community-based systems that were supposed to replace it. This bill frames incarceration, homelessness, and emergency room boarding as justification for a new institution. But those failures are the result of chronic underinvestment in community mental health services, supportive housing, mobile crisis teams, peer support, and outpatient treatment. Building another state hospital risks diverting attention and resources away from the very services that prevent people from reaching crisis in the first place. Progressive mental health policy centers dignity, autonomy, integration, and recovery—not segregation and confinement. Large, centralized institutions are expensive to build, difficult to staff, and historically prone to becoming warehouses when funding tightens. Expanding long-term inpatient beds may sound like action, but it does not address the root causes of mental health system breakdown: lack of housing, workforce shortages, and insufficient early intervention. If individuals with severe mental illness are cycling through jails and ERs, that is a failure of our community infrastructure—not evidence that institutionalization is the answer. New Hampshire should invest in: • Permanent supportive housing • Fully funded community mental health centers • Crisis stabilization units • Workforce development for behavioral health professionals • Diversion programs that keep people out of jails Studying how to rebuild a state psychiatric hospital sends the wrong message about our priorities and risks normalizing a return to institutional models that history has already judged harshly. We need modern, humane, community-centered solutions, not a revival of the failures of the past. For these reasons, HB 1372 should be rejected.
I support HB1317 because strong, modernized patient privacy protections are essential for trust in our health system. Any updates to statute should safeguard sensitive health information without undermining public-health reporting or restricting access to reproductive or gender-affirming care. I urge the committee to ensure the bill’s language protects patients, not loopholes, and maintains the state’s ability to monitor health trends responsibly
I am in full support of this bill and in protecting patient privacy
Libraries should be controlled by the people and not by the government--to preserve critical thinking and avoid authoritarianism.
L
This is for the sake of all NH voters.
Children who identify as a gender other than those assigned at birth are extremely vulnerable and need supportive adults around them to help them navigate the life-changing decisions they will make. This bill would remove protections from young people who are being prevented from accessing gender-affirming care or being raised in a gender-affirming way by one or more parent or guardian despite what we know to be true about the positive and life-saving benefits of being raised in an affirming environment.
Please leave these poor children alone!
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