Honor Carmen's Legacy in Patient Care

I'm raising money to publish my sister Carmen's book Un | Harmed: Healing the Fractured Relationship Between Patients and Healthcare Workers. Carmen worked on this book (her "booklet," as she called it) for nearly a decade, with the goal of sharing what she'd learned about patient-centered, trauma-informed healthcare with as many people as possible. She wanted to distribute it widely to clinics, hospitals, med school and residency programs, and other healthcare settings to help providers learn how to better serve their patients.

Carmen was in the final stages of editing the book when she died, and I've decided to move forward with self-publishing it this spring. The funds raised here will allow me to focus on finishing all the edits, hire a designer to format the book, and promote it to Carmen's networks. The book will be available on all the major self-pub outlets so that folks can easily access it. All the proceeds from book sales will then be distributed back into local reproductive healthcare access funds, the lifeblood of Carmen's work.

Anyone who donates $100 or more will receive a copy of the book (print or digital, whatever their preference). Thank you all for your support!

Below is a brief description of the book.

Un | Harmed is a guide for people who are afraid of the doctor, or who experience some variation of the sentiment “I hate going to the doctor,” and who hope to feel more comfortable in these encounters. It is also a guide for healthcare providers who want to better understand this phenomenon and change their practice to help patients feel safe and in control in their presence.

Fear of healthcare encounters may be based on a bad experience, or on the long history of unethical treatment of Black, Brown and Indigenous people, immigrants, women, people who are LGBTQ+, prisoners, those who are low income, people with mental illness, and people with disabilities. This guide aims to help us, in the role of patients, see more clearly why we feel so afraid, and more importantly, take the shame and self-blame away from the bad experience. It also aims to help those of us in the role of providers develop practices for making healthcare less scary.