By Thomas A. Parmalee
The Equal Deathcare Database may never have been created if not for a serendipitous encounter in an elevator in June 2023.
Focusing on the LGBTQIA+ community, the resource “aims to provide the tools and knowledge which ensures everyone is respected in death, no matter who we are or who we love.”
It was founded by Jennifer Wright-Berryman (pictured at top at a local Pride event), an associate professor in social work at the University of Cincinnati, who is also a consultant, trainer and speaker on community-based suicide prevention; and Kat Vancil-Coleman, a licensed funeral director and embalmer with the Paul W. Harris Funeral Home in Rochester, New York.
How the two found each other was “a happy accident,” according to Vancil-Coleman, who explained that Wright-Berryman was attending an International Death, Grief, and Bereavement Conference when she began “chatting up” Teresa Dutko, a faculty member with the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science, during an elevator ride.
Wright-Berryman was at the gathering to present her findings on a study of almost 100 randomly selected funeral homes to see if their websites made any reference to the LGBTQIA+ community.
“I asked the question: If I were a member of an LGBTQIA+ community and was trying to find a funeral home for myself, a spouse, or a community member/friend in the LGBTQIA+ community, where would I look? How would I know this provider would welcome me?” Wright-Berryman said.
That led to scouring the randomly selected sites and realizing that none of them were explicitly inclusive. “This was both shocking and not shocking to me,” she said. “I wanted to make inclusive providers easier to find for LGBTQIA+ folks, and I wanted those providers who were inclusive to be more explicit. I have met several gay funeral home owners and directors along the way who have changed their websites or at least have increased their awareness of their discoverability. Those steps forward are rewarding. One of my main concerns is our rural areas of the U.S. where resources for LGBTQIA+ folks are scarce. How can folks find inclusive death care in some of the more underserved areas of the U.S.? We need a resource to help. Everyone deserves a send-off that aligns with their life story, their identity, and how/who they love.”
Dutko told Wright-Berryman that she needed to connect with one of her students, who just happened to be Vancil-Coleman.
“She put us in contact, and we started building this project,” Vancil-Coleman said, noting that both she and Wright-Berryman are members of the LGBTQIA+ community.
“Kat was originally a participant in my research study on the barriers and solutions to equitable deathcare,” Wright-Berryman said. “As Kat and I continued to talk more … I shared with her my vision for a resource, and a natural collaboration began.”
Wright-Berryman explained that her interest in deathcare began after she attended an American Association of Suicidology Conference in 2018. “As suicidologists, we work hard to prevent death, but we do lose folks to suicide, and those deaths are stigmatized,” she said. “At the conference, we discussed our lack of collaboration with deathcare providers and a lack of education in the deathcare system – and I wanted to remedy that. Recently, I presented my equitable deathcare work at the AAS 2025 conference on the main stage as a TED-style talk.”
Fortunately, Vancil-Coleman knew the perfect person to build an online platform and database – her wife and partner of 22 years, Allison Bloome.
“My wife is an incredible web designer, and she built the site from the ground up,” she said. “I’m so happy to have a web designer in my life.”
Vancil-Coleman gives full credit to Wright-Berryman coming up with the concept and vision for the site – she just helped move it along, she said.
“I had an initial idea and did three years of research, but Kat and her wife, Allie, have provided the insider knowledge, creative force, and served as the overall experts in all things related to the website,” Wright-Berryman said. “I humble myself to their knowledge because I’m only an academic researcher and advocate. Kat is the eyes, ears, and soul inside the operation. Allie is our web designer and creative genius (Kat is also a creative genius). I’m very fortunate to get to work with them.”
Finding Her Way to the Profession
Vancil-Coleman worked in health care for almost 20 years before abruptly changing paths to make her way into deathcare.
“I was a professional chef working in hospitals and nursing homes,” she explained. “I designed meal plans and prescribed diets and learned all about palliative care. At a nursing home, we would have families bring in traditional family recipes, and we would cook for the person during their final days. And so, I spent a lot of time around the dying and their families.”
While she was always curious about the deathcare profession, it wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic tore across the planet that her interest turned into something more.
During that time, her grandfather was in a nursing home dying of kidney cancer, but she was not allowed to see him.
Restrictions on gatherings also prevented the family from having a funeral to honor his legacy.
“It was right in the heart of the lockdown, so he was cremated, and we did not have any kind of service or anything until the next year,” she said. “And that was my aha moment when I realized how important funerals are … when you don’t get to have one.”
So, in the fall of 2020, she enrolled in the pre-mortuary science program at Terra State University in Fremont, Ohio, earning an associate degree while still working at a hospital. In the fall of 2022, she started on campus at the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science, earning her bachelor’s degree in December 2023.
“I just fell in love with it,” she said. “I got to work part time at a funeral home while in school, and even if I worked 10 hours and was starving and exhausted with blisters on my feet, I wanted to do it again the next day.”
Helping Her Community
Many of Vancil-Coleman’s friends are queer and trans, and she entered the profession knowing that she was going to advocate for and take care of her community.
After connecting with Wright-Berryman and learning about her research, she wanted to get the information into the hands of others, so they would know they have rights and options.
“You don’t want to go to a small-town funeral home that maybe can’t meet your needs as a queer family,” she said.
The Equal Deathcare Database includes a map that is intuitive and user friendly – all you must do is click on your state to find a list of funeral homes that embrace working with the LGBTQIA+ community.
“I think there is a misconception that if you don’t have rainbows all over your website that you exclude members of the LGBTQIA+ community, but that is not necessarily the case,” Vancil-Coleman said. “A lot of funeral homes very much want to take care of the community and be there for them … but they don’t always know the language or have the knowledge to do so.”
Providing that knowledge is what Vancil-Coleman does on a regular basis. Fresh out of mortuary school, she teamed up with the Ohio Funeral Directors Association on a webinar to highlight LGBTQIA+ basics, including terminology and answers to common questions.
One that comes up a lot revolves around the name of the deceased.
“If they had a legal name change – sure, it can be put on the death certificate,” she said. If that is not the case, however, you can use the official name on the death certificate but still publish an obituary with a different name under their lived identity. “And you can put them in clothing that made them feel good,” she said.
Right now, almost 200 funeral homes are listed in the database, some which were added based on Wright-Berryman’s initial survey, others that were added as a result of word of mouth and some that reached out asking to be listed.
When considering whether to list a funeral home in the database, Wright-Berryman and Vancil-Coleman use a rubric, which they provide to funeral homes, so they can also do a self-evaluation.
“We want them to see what we are looking for when we talk about inclusivity in a funeral home,” Vancil-Coleman explained.
As to why more funeral homes don’t advertise that they want to serve the LGBTQIA+ community, Vancil-Coleman said many times, it’s because most of their customer base is conservative, and they are afraid of backlash or losing business. “That is why when we choose to add a funeral home to the site, we only do so after communicating with the funeral home to be sure it is OK,” she said.
Since the database is managed by a small team, adding funeral homes has been “slow going,” Wright-Berryman said. “We’d love to hear from more funeral personnel about their inclusive practices, so we can add them,” she said. “The vetting process takes a while … We’d like to make it clear that we know funeral homes and other death care providers might not be explicitly inclusive (discoverable on their website) but practice inclusivity. We’d like to hear from these providers! We don’t want to miss anyone. We want as many resources as we can find in all areas of the country.”
A research assistant, John Poland, is helping Wright-Berryman evaluate funeral homes state by state to determine whether they should be added to the database. “He’s fantastic and has been spreading the word as well as doing a lot of the vetting,” Wright-Berryman said.
“We have also added funeral homes as they have contacted us … if they are looking to be listed on the site, clearly they want to serve the community,” Vancil-Colman said. “We have also found a few funeral homes featured as having good relationships with the community – and funeral directors who we know are members of the community are good allies. We always love hearing from new funeral directors – it always makes my day when I get an email saying they want to be on the website. I am also always asking people if they had a good experience with a funeral home to tell us.”
The Equal Deathcare Database also provides information about death doulas, legal and estate issues and more. “We are trying to amass as much information as possible,” Vancil-Coleman said.
For instance, visitors can find blog posts on a variety of topics, including suicide and pet loss.
“Pets are so important,” Vancil-Coleman said. “In the LGBTQIA+ community, lots of us cannot have children, so we have pets who are our kids. And how we memorialize them is tremendously important. It is a topic that is just coming into the limelight in the funeral business … we’d also love to have guest bloggers.”
The goal is to compile as much useful information in one place, where members of the LGBTQIA+ community can find it easily.
They also hope to encourage connections among funeral professionals, so they can learn from and support each other in serving the LGBTQIA+ community.
There are some other challenges that the two hope to help solve through the site, including some problematic issues that come up when shopping for funeral homes, Wright-Berryman said.
“Sure, you can fill out the online form most websites have to get more information, but if you’re a woman married to a woman or a trans person, those forms aren’t always inclusive – and you might have to call a funeral home and ‘out’ yourself before you’re ready,” Wright-Berryman said. “But if you go to the Equal Deathcare website and find a provider, you might breathe easier knowing that we’ve vetted the providers. That disclosing your sexual or gender identity will not result in different service. And to be clear, Kat and I never assume that a provider would discriminate, but your general LGBTQIA+ public have often suffered discrimination from various service providers and trust is in short supply.”
Given that reality, she recommends that more providers be explicit in wanting to serve the LGBTQIA+ community to bridge that communication gap. “We’re not suggesting that funeral homes should wavy huge Pride flags,” she said. “We understand that community response can hurt a provider’s bottom line. What we hope for are for things like inclusivity statements on websites (e.g. We serve everyone, regardless of race, gender…)”
‘The Tide Is Turning’
The funeral profession employs many members of the LGBTQIA+ community, Wright-Berryman observed. “The tide is turning. We’re trying to shepherd that,” she said. “Our goal is to bring together LGBTQIA+ customers and providers. Also, our goal is not just for LGBTQIA+ folks to find an inclusive provider, but to also have the opportunity for the kind of send-off that aligns with their life story and identity.”
So far, the site has generated lots of interest and support from a variety of individuals and sectors.
“I was speaking to someone who is an archivist at a library, and he was very excited to see all these things in one place,” Vancil-Coleman said.
Despite the growing popularity of the site, there are still several states where no funeral homes are listed in search results.
“After we put in the initial funeral homes, we have tried focusing on the states where there is the most need,” Vancil-Coleman said. “In the state of New York, you are probably going to be OK because the culture is more progressive than, say, Ohio, where I grew up. So, we have started in the states where it is harder to find an LGBTQIA+ friendly funeral home.”
Honoring members of the LGBTQIA+ community can be challenging when family members planning the funeral service did not support the lifestyle of their loved one, Vancil-Coleman said.
“It’s a delicate situation … you don’t want to push the family too hard,” she said.
She noted that she had an instructor at CCMS who worked with a family that did not want the girlfriend of the deceased to attend the funeral.
“After many conversations, they were able to get the family to allow the girlfriend to have separate time – and time for other friends in the community to come without them being there. That way, the stress of them being together was not present. They ultimately understood that even though they did not approve of the relationship, this person is grieving, too, and their daughter was special to them, too.”
For funeral homes struggling with such situations, not every decision needs to be made during the first meeting, she said. Emotions are high, and sometimes family members may need a little time to process all that’s happened.
Where She Belongs
Despite misgivings about entering a rather conservative field, Vancil-Coleman was pleasantly surprised to find that for the most part, the deathcare profession has welcomed her with open arms.
The staff at the Paul W. Harris Funeral Home have all been wonderful, she said, noting that she was straightforward about who she is and what she is passionate about before being hired.
“When I was looking for a job, I wanted to be sure I was comfortable with it and it was a good fit,” she said.
“My boss – Rick Harris Jr. – has been amazing,” she said. “He is the manager, and his dad is the owner. Everyone here has been super amazing.”
The community that the funeral home serves is largely Ukrainian, which is a culture Vancil-Coleman is learning about for the first time, she said. “We do a lot of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox services. Coming from Ohio, it was more of a Baptist and Protestant area.”
As for the Equal Deathcare Database, it got a boost from a $15,000 UC Pivot Grant that was divided among three different projects Wright-Berryman led.
Moving forward, the two will figure out whether to establish the site as an LLC or a nonprofit and are looking forward to what the future brings, they said.
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