So often when we are researching marginalized groups the language we use does not match the systems at play. For example, if I wanted to research sex workers and their access to healthcare, I couldn't just use the term sex workers. Why? Because the system does not recognize this term as valid. The system refers to sex workers as prostitutes. In order for me to find all the relevant information on my topic I would have to use this offensive term so that the system understands what I am asking for.
The same is true for researching unhoused folx. The system uses the terms homelessness and homeless to describe these folx. Activists have been using the terms unhoused and houseless because words matter and there is an important distinction between home and house. I bring this issue up because it is important to be aware of how language affects how we search and the information we find but also how we choose to represent ourselves and our communities.
Language is one way we can take the power back.
(Mis)Diagnosed by
"A passionate and well-informed study on the importance of improving inclusiveness in mental health evaluations."―Kirkus Reviews In a clear, empathetic style, Jonathan Foiles, author of the critically acclaimed This City Is Killing Me, takes us through troubling examples of bias in mental health work. Placing them in context of past blunders in the history of psychiatry and the DSM, he looks closely at questions that lay bare the intersections between mental health care, race, gender, and sexuality: * Why are women more likely to be labeled borderline personalities? * Is transphobia being treated today like homosexuality was in the past? * Has "protest psychosis," a term used to diagnose Black men during the civil rights era, simply been renamed schizoaffective disorder? * How different is our current label of "intellectual disability" from the history of eugenics? * What does it actually mean to be diagnosed with a "mental illness"? This slim but wide-ranging collection of essays wrestles with these questions and offers potential ways forward in a world where mental health diagnoses can be helpful, but not necessarily absolute. A pragmatic and sympathetic guide to how we might craft a better and more just therapeutic future for all people.
Revolting Prostitutes by
How the law harms sex workers--and what they want instead Do you have to endorse prostitution in order to support sex worker rights? Should clients be criminalized, and can the police deliver justice? In Revolting Prostitutes, sex workers Juno Mac and Molly Smith bring a fresh perspective to questions that have long been contentious. Speaking from a growing global sex worker rights movement, and situating their argument firmly within wider questions of migration, work, feminism, and resistance to white supremacy, they make it clear that anyone committed to working towards justice and freedom should be in support of the sex worker rights movement.
Necessary Conversations by
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.Necessary Conversations: Understanding Racism as a Barrier to Achieving Health Equity reflects the conviction that a true prioritization of health in our communities is impossible without a commitment to racial equity. Drawing on the pivotal social events of 2020 in America, it extends a powerfulcall to action based on a growing body of evidence that racism is the underlying cause of so many poor health outcomes. Contributors across health, education, law, and media further the longstanding work of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to create a "Culture of Health" by engaging in authenticdiscussions about the systems and structures that harm people of color and offering provocative ideas and strategies to inspire action.Necessary Conversations ultimately highlights the importance of building leadership and partnerships through those who are most affected in the community. It considers what it would take to overhaul institutions that treat people differently on the basis of race and recognizes that we all must shareresources and join together to support the advancement of health and racial equity.
The Care We Dream Of by
What if you could trust in getting the health care you need in ways that felt good and helped you thrive? What if the health system honoured and valued queer and trans people's lives, bodies, and expertise? What if LGBTQ+ communities led and organized our own health care as a form of mutual aid? What if every aspect of our health care was rooted in a commitment to our healing, pleasure, and liberation? LGBTQ+ health care doesn't look like this today, but it could. This is the care we dream of. The Care We Dream Of is not quite an essay collection, and not quite an anthology. Instead, it's a hybrid kind of book that weaves together the author's essays on topics like queering health and healing, transforming the health system, kinship, aging, and death, alongside stories, poetry and non-fiction pieces by Alexander McClelland and Zoe Dodd, Blyth Barnow, Carly Boyce, jaye simpson, Jillian Christmas, Joshua Wales, Kai Cheng Thom, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Sand C. Chang. The book also includes interviews with activists, health care workers and researchers whose work offers insights into what liberatory and transformative approaches to LGBTQ+ health can look like in practice. Interviewees include Anita "Durt" O'Shea (of St. James Infirmary), Dawn Serra, Hannah Kia, Ronica Mukerjee, and Sean Saifa Wall. The Care We Dream Of offers possibilities - grounded in historical examples, present-day experiments, and dreams of the future - for more liberatory and transformative approaches to LGBTQ+ health and healing. It challenges readers to think differently about LGBTQ+ health and asks what it would look like if our health care were rooted in a commitment to the flourishing and liberation of all LGBTQ+ people. This book is a calling out, a out, a calling in, and a call to action. It is a spell of healing and transformation, rooted in love.
Bodies and Barriers by
LGBT people pervasively experience health disparities, affecting every part of their bodies and lives. Yet many are still grappling to understand the mutually reinforcing health care challenges that lead to worsened health outcomes. Bodies and Barriers informs health care professionals, students in health professions, policymakers, and fellow activists about these challenges, providing insights and a road map for action that could improve queer health. Through artfully articulated, data-informed essays by twenty-six well-known and emerging queer activists--including Alisa Bowman, Jack Harrison-Quintana, Liz Margolies, Robyn Ochs, Sean Strub, Justin Sabia-Tanis, Ryan Thoreson, Imani Woody, and more--Bodies and Barriers illuminates the health challenges LGBT people experience throughout their lives and challenges conventional wisdom about health care delivery. It probes deeply into the roots of the disparities faced by those in the LGBT community and provides crucial information to fight for health equity and better health outcomes. The contributors to;Bodies and Barriers look for tangible improvements, drawing from the history of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. and from struggles against health care bias and discrimination. At a galvanizing moment when LGBT people have experienced great strides in lived equality, but our health as a community still lags, here is an indispensable blueprint for change by some of the most passionate and important health activists in the LGBT movement today.
Under the Skin by
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR * "A stunning exposé of why Black people in our society 'live sicker and die quicker'--an eye-opening game changer."--Oprah Daily From an award-winning writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributor to the 1619 Project comes a landmark book that tells the full story of racial health disparities in America, revealing the toll racism takes on individuals and the health of our nation. In 2018, Linda Villarosa's New York Times Magazine article on maternal and infant mortality among black mothers and babies in America caused an awakening. Hundreds of studies had previously established a link between racial discrimination and the health of Black Americans, with little progress toward solutions. But Villarosa's article exposing that a Black woman with a college education is as likely to die or nearly die in childbirth as a white woman with an eighth grade education made racial disparities in health care impossible to ignore. Now, in Under the Skin, Linda Villarosa lays bare the forces in the American health-care system and in American society that cause Black people to "live sicker and die quicker" compared to their white counterparts. Today's medical texts and instruments still carry fallacious slavery-era assumptions that Black bodies are fundamentally different from white bodies. Study after study of medical settings show worse treatment and outcomes for Black patients. Black people live in dirtier, more polluted communities due to environmental racism and neglect from all levels of government. And, most powerfully, Villarosa describes the new understanding that coping with the daily scourge of racism ages Black people prematurely. Anchored by unforgettable human stories and offering incontrovertible proof, Under the Skin is dramatic, tragic, and necessary reading.
Basics of the U. S. Health Care System by
Basics of the U.S. Health Care System provides a broad introduction to the workings of the health care system in the US. Engaging and activities-oriented, the text offers an accessible overview of the major concepts of healthcare operations; the role of government and public health; inpatient, outpatient, and long-term care services; payors and financing; careers; and legal and ethical issues.Updated with new data throughout, Basics of the U.S. Health Care System, Fifth Edition also includes coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the global impact of the pandemic and global vaccination rates; the impact of socioeconomic factors on COVID outcomes; the disease's impact on mental health; the U.S. government role in managing the pandemic, and more.Thoroughly revised, Basics of the U.S. Health Care System, Fifth Edition includes:- Updated data, including new Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) at-a-Glance 2021 data.- Expanded discussion on social justice and the social determinants of health. - New chapter on U.S. Population Health discusses the differences between public health population health, and community health. - New laws and legislation passed during the Trump and Biden administrations, including the healthcare provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, and discussion of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.- Expanded careers chapter offers eight new healthcare career opportunities.- Final chapter takes a comparative look the US health care system vs. other developed countries, and discusses trends that impact the U.S. healthcare system including digital health, systems and design thinking, pay for performance and value based purchasing, and more.
Caught in the Crosshairs of American Healthcare by
The inspiring true story of how a small group of dedicated leaders led radical and relentless change to save McLean, Harvard's historic psychiatric hospital. Lloyd I. Sederer, MD, recounts the unfettered story of how McLean survived impending closure or sale to once again prosper and regain its international stature as the hospital where you would want a loved one to be treated for a psychiatric or substance use disorder. Only growth and innovation can reverse an institutional fiscal crisis. Dr. Sederer describes how, over five years of hemorrhaging money, McLean eluded the now pervasive corporatization of American healthcare and was clinically and financially rebuilt despite the odds, all while serving with integrity and soul more patients than ever before. Caught in the Crosshairs of American Healthcare offers leaders and aspiring leaders in healthcare and other complex organizations a candid look behind the curtain of McLean's transformation into a hospital open to all, no longer only the rich and famous. Dr. Sederer also finely details * the corporatization of medicine putting profits before patients, * endless insurance hurdles, * how to prove clinical improvements, and * our broken and inequitable health and mental health systems of care. ​Caught in the Crosshairs of American Healthcare shows readers that, with grit, brains, and support, we can still change our world.