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In February 2025, the Health Research Intervention Kuthamini Afya Yetu (HEKA) programme research partnership held a 3-day workshop as part of a project aimed at developing a framework for community-based participatory mathematical modelling of HIV epidemics.1 The project is led by the Community Research and Technical Support Hub—an emerging research-focused hub aimed at uniting key population communities in research, learning exchanges and knowledge translation—and brought together a consortium of programme managers and monitoring and evaluation experts from seven community-based organisations run by and for gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (GBMSM) across Kenya, alongside academic researchers. However, on 24 January 2025, just 10 days prior to our meeting, organisations globally had received notices to ‘stop work’—interrupting decades of HIV prevention and treatment service delivery, supported through US funding.2 The announcement of the stop work orders had an immediate effect on GBMSM communities. We therefore catalysed part of our workshop to reflect on the impact of the orders on GBMSM community organisations and their members.