A Failure of Imagination

The healthcare system has a failure of imagination. Here’s what we’ve built instead.

A different kind of healthcare already exists. Here’s how it works—and how to build your own.

In this book, you will find:

A step-by-step path to replicate all or part of the ABB model—whether you’re starting a practice, a nonprofit, or a neuroinclusive workplace
The story of All Brains Belong VT®—a neuroinclusive community health nonprofit built from the ground up by and for neurodivergent people
A clear-eyed look at how the healthcare system, schools, and workplaces fail neurodivergent people—and why that failure is a design choice, not an accident
Practical tools for healthcare providers, employers, educators, and community builders who want to do better

Buy The Book

A Failure of Imagination

Building neuroinclusive healthcare, workplaces, and community

The story of All Brains Belong VT® — a neuroinclusive community health organization built from the ground up by and for neurodivergent people. This book offers practical tools for healthcare providers, employers, educators, and community builders who want to do better.

Book sales support ABB directly. After distributor fees, 100% goes back into our programs. Direct sales available for U.S. shipping only. International buyers should choose Amazon.

Reviews

A Failure of Imagination provides the justification and the roadmap for changing the game of how healthcare is provided to neurodivergent people, and ultimately, for all people. As a neurodivergent physician grounded in social justice values and lived experience, Dr. Mel Houser has directly experienced the harm that can be caused by systems that are insensitive to the needs of patients, and that separates healthcare from broader quality of life issues. This book gives actionable direction for the changes that must be made. A Failure of Imagination should be read by all — neurodivergent people, families, healthcare professionals and policy makers, and anyone who has ever felt there must be another way.

~Barry M. Prizant, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Author, Uniquely Human: A Different Way of Seeing Autism

A Failure of Imagination is a brave, clear-eyed, and deeply humane book that names what so many feel but few dare to say: our healthcare system was never built for everyone. Dr. Houser writes with the rare authority of someone who has lived the harm and built the alternative, turning hard-won insight into a model of care rooted in belonging, access, and dignity. Rigorous yet warm, unflinching yet hopeful, it refuses to accept “how things are” as how things must be. This is essential reading for anyone who believes a more imaginative, inclusive way of caring for one another is possible—and worth building.

~Lawrence Fung, M.D., Ph.D., Ed.D. (Hon.), DFAACAP, DFAPA, Director, Stanford Center for Neurodiversity and Human Potential; Associate Professor, Stanford University School of Medicine

The evidence that healthcare fails autistic and neurodivergent people has been clear for years. What’s been harder to imagine is what we’d build instead. A Failure of Imagination answers that question – not in theory but in practice, with the voices of the community at its centre. Melissa Houser writes as both clinician and autistic person, with the hard-won clarity of someone who has experienced the failure of the system and refused to wait for it to catch up.

~Dr. Mary Doherty, Clinical Associate Professor, University of Dublin, Ireland; Founder, Autistic Doctors International

How instructive these words are for all of us who desire to do right by our patients, communities and even this health care system.How instructive these words are for all of us who desire to do right by our patients, communities and even this health care system. I found it highly motivating and centering on how to solve real problems that impact the health of people, friends and colleagues. This is what distributed agency looks like at scale. For anyone working in healthcare, education, organizational design, or community building, All Brains Belong isn’t just an inspiring story. It’s a working model.

~Jay Fetter, MSHA, Family Medicine Residency Redesign and Practice Transformation Leader

This book fills a gaping hole that most people aren’t even aware exists. It masterfully identifies the problems present in modern day medical practices that confront many autistic people and identifies ways to move forward. This book, filled with the lived experience and stories of patients, clinicians, community members, provides us with the very thing it is suggesting we can create — community care: a space where people are truly heard, experience is validated, there is a commitment to sharing knowledge and resources, and the collective consciousness drives meaningful change.

~Amy Laurent, Ph.D., OTR/L and Jacquelyn Feder, Psy.D., Co-Founders, Autism Level UP!

A Failure of Imagination reveals one of healthcare’s most invisible truths: communication is not just something clinicians do, it’s something institutions design. When communication is structured around hierarchy, it becomes the mechanism through which harm is perpetuated. When it is redesigned around trust, flexibility, and human variation, it becomes the foundation of healing. This book doesn’t just reimagine healthcare. It challenges every institution built around the fiction of a “normal” human.

~AC Goldberg, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

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