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Advancing kidney health justice through gender-affirming care

Nature Reviews Nephrology volume 18, pages 343–344 (2022)Cite this article

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Advancing kidney health justice for all requires the kidney-care community to embrace gender-affirming care across the life course, including inclusion of gender minority individuals in research, thoughtful attention to sexual-orientation and gender-identity data collection, as well as the promotion of policies and practices that protect and provide comprehensive care to all patients.

Gender-affirming care is essential to achieve health justice for transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) individuals1,2,3. TGD individuals experience greater morbidity and mortality than cisgender individuals, owing to their increased exposure to health-harming factors (such as violence, discriminatory policies, poverty and unemployment), and poorer-quality health care1. Kidney-care professionals have a responsibility to provide affirming, informed care across the life course of all individuals who identify as TGD (Supplementary Box 1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

    Han E. Eckenrode

  2. Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine; and Division of Nephrology, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Seattle, WA, USA

    Joseph T. Flynn

  3. Division of Nephrology and General Internal Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA

    Dinushika Mohottige

Authors
  1. Han E. Eckenrode
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  2. Joseph T. Flynn
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  3. Dinushika Mohottige
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Han E. Eckenrode or Dinushika Mohottige.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Eckenrode, H.E., Flynn, J.T. & Mohottige, D. Advancing kidney health justice through gender-affirming care. Nat Rev Nephrol 18, 343–344 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41581-022-00575-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41581-022-00575-y

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