Trans health crisis: for us it's life or death

The winner of the 2001 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for best documentary was a film titled Southern Comfort. It chronicles the last year of the life of Robert Eads, who was born female but chose to live as a man. Eads died of ovarian cancer at age 52, after 20 doctors refused to treat him because he was a transsexual. Eads’ experience is not an isolated one. Leslie Feinberg, activist and celebrated transgender author, agreed to “go public” on the crisis in trans health care. We trust that public health researchers, practitioners, and educators will respond to the urgency of the current situation and act before other lives are lost.