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Focusing on the provision of gender-affirming care, Health Care Civil Rights analyzes the difficulties and potential of discrimination law in healthcare settings. The application of civil rights law could be a powerful response to health inequalities in the US, but conservative challenges and the complex and fragmented nature of our health care system have limited the real-world success of this strategy. Revealing deep divides and competing interests that reverberate through patient experiences, insurance claims, and courtroom arguments, Anna Kirkland explains what health care civil rights are, how they work in theory and practice, and how to strengthen them.

About the Author

Anna Kirkland is the Kim Lane Scheppele Collegiate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan. She is author of Vaccine Court: The Law and Politics of Injury and Fat Rights: Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood.

Reviews

"Health Care Civil Rights brilliantly reveals how antidiscrimination law’s lofty goals are no match for the US health care system’s pathologies. Providing more than just a captivating read on trans patients’ fates, Anna Kirkland offers a blueprint for studying minority rights and the political economy of health."—Joanna Wuest, author of Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement

“This innovative book considers how health care civil rights can be upheld in the US health care system by examining how civil rights are actually implemented on the ground. Informed by extensive fieldwork, Health Care Civil Rights is written in a refreshingly engaging style that makes room for both an intellectually incisive argument and crystal-clear, practical pointers for correcting discriminatory patterns that harm vulnerable patients.”—Colleen Grogan, author of Grow and Hide: The History of America's Health Care State

"Health Care Civil Rights is a meticulously documented, theoretically poignant, and exquisitely written study of the insufficiency of civil rights policy in addressing systemic health inequalities. But structures can change and so can our ways of thinking about enduring social problems baked into every level of healthcare. Kirkland’s astute work concludes with sound recommendations for alleviating the failures of health policy and practice."–stef m. shuster, author of Trans Medicine: The Emergence and Practice of Treating Gender