Guiding gender-atypical kids through puberty
My 11-year-old daughter and I cracked open a book I’d bought for her on puberty and changing female bodies. On the very first page it informed her that, once her body developed, men would start looking at her differently.
We crinkled our noses in some combination of discomfort and skepticism. No matter how her body changed, we both knew she would continue to wear the same oversize hoodies, cargo pants and short hair dyed pink that she’d been sporting for years. However well intentioned and helpful to gender-typical girls the book’s messages were, they didn’t seem to apply to a kid like mine, who had flouted gender norms her entire life. These books and others like it operate on the assumption that, once puberty hit, girls like mine would feminize and conform.
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As COVID-19 cases soar and vaccine rollout evolves, hospitals are also working to comply with a federal price transparency rule that took effect on Jan. 1.
The American Hospital Association (AHA) has argued that the rule – which requires hospitals to post the prices insurers actually pay for services – will harm hospital negotiations with insurers, require vast resources to implement, and yield little benefit for consumers. But a federal appeals court in December ruled against the group s legal challenge, and now hospitals across the country are working to comply. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and staunch supporters of the rule say that it s a critical new step towards driving down out-of-control healthcare costs.
Filed in In Memoriam on January 15, 2021
Miriam Decosts-Willis, the first Black faculty member at what is now the University of Memphis and whose career in higher education spanned four decades, died on January 7 at her home in Memphis, Tennessee. She was 86 years old.
A native of Florence, Alabama, Dr. Decosta-Willis was the granddaughter of a slave. She was the first African American student to be admitted to Westover, a preparatory school in Middlebury, Connecticut. She was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts. When she was denied admission to graduate programs at what was then Memphis State University due to the color of her skin, she earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Dr. Decosta was one of the first Black women to earn a doctorate at Johns Hopkins.