New book available online addresses health care disparities

Lippincott Williams & Wilkins is proud to announce publication of LGBTQ Cultures: What Health Care Professionals Need to Know About Sexual and Gender Diversity, written by Michele J. Eliason, PhD, Suzanne L Dibble, DNSc, RN, Jeanne DeJoseph, CNM, PhD, and Peggy Chinn, RN, PhD. The book is available online only at www.NursingCenter.com/lgbtq and addresses health care disparities among the gay, bisexual, and transgender communities. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) is part of Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading provider of information and business intelligence for students, professionals, and institutions in medicine, nursing, allied health, and pharmacy.

The authors are women who have been actively involved in lesbian social, cultural and political circles most of their lives. Each experienced the demands to be heterosexual while growing up. Now, as openly lesbian nurse leaders, they share insights into the LGBTQ experience in health care. The book is written for those who have little or no experience in LGBTQ communities.

"Readers will come to this book with varying degrees of openness to learning and understanding our experience," say the authors. "We hope that our approach provides a bridge to greater understanding and appreciation."

"We will raise issues that are controversial and have no easy resolution, and, indeed, we struggle with the many thorny issues raised in this book ourselves. We raise them in order to challenge health care professionals to begin conversations about these issues and start identifying the steps that are needed to change the health care climate to one that is open, welcoming, and inclusive to all the people it serves."