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In Equity at the End, authors Staci M. Zavattaro and Jennifer L. Wright-Berryman explore the intricate and often confusing landscape of deathcare in the United States. This complex system of public, private, and nonprofit institutions often leaves individuals perplexed as they navigate their final arrangements, revealing significant inequities.
Combining comprehensive research from public administration and social work to examine policy design and deathcare bureaucracy, Zavattaro and Wright-Berryman scrutinize the governance of the deathcare system, the policies shaping it, and the economic and personal biases influencing its implementation. They begin by defining the concept of death equity, exploring disparities in access to resources like eco-friendly burials, identity-aligned services, and affordable body disposition. Through their extensive research, including interviews with over 70 deathcare professionals from both the public and private sectors, the authors provide readers with tools to navigate these inequities, addressing the reluctance to discuss and prepare for death.
Equity at the End offers practical tools and insights to reduce inequities and improve transparency in the deathcare system. Promoting death literacy and equitable practices, this work is essential reading for social scientists, public policy experts, healthcare professionals, and educators.
This is an important introduction to death equity, covering barriers to a "good" death, alternative care for LGBTQIA+ individuals, the costs of death and burial, the handling of the corpse, green and natural burial, water cremation, the marginalization of non-Christian populations or those with HIV/AIDS or death by suicide, the mental and emotional toll on people who deliver death care services, death literacy, and more. Zavattaro (public administration, Univ. of Central Florida) and Wright-Berryman (social work, Univ. of Cincinnati) combine their expertise to compile interviews with death managers and consumers, studies of cremation records, accounts of visits to cemeteries, personal stories, and the Equal Deathcare web resource for sexual, gender, and religious minorities. The authors define terms such as deadnaming; review confusing federal, state, and local government regulations, rules, and policies about handling, transport, and body disposition, cremation, and/or burial; and discuss the "dirty work" stigma, burnout, the shortage of forensic pathologists, funeral insurance, end-of-life planning, bereavement leave policy, private family-owned and corporate funeral homes, and indigent burials of unclaimed bodies by government agencies, for example, during the COVID-19 epidemic. There are extensive chapter references, 10 illustrative case studies, reflection questions, and suggestions for further reading.
— E. R. Paterson, emeritus, SUNY College at Cortland
Staci M. Zavattaro is Professor of Public Administration at the University of Central Florida, USA.
Jennifer L. Wright-Berryman is Associate Professor of Social Work in the College of Allied Health Sciences at the University of Cincinnati, USA.
Introduction
Chapter 1. An Introduction to American Deathcare
Chapter 2. Defining Death Equity
Chapter 3. Accessing Alternative Death Care and the Good Death
Chapter 4. Equitable Death Care for LGBTQIA+ Consumers
Chapter 5. Accounting for Death
Chapter 6. Using the Corpse
Chapter 7. Stigmatizing Death
Chapter 8. Providing Death Care
Chapter 9. Expanding Deathcare Literacy
Chapter 10. Changing the Deathcare Conversation