Peter Brabeck for Propublica

Peter Brabeck, 73, poses for a portrait at his home in Carmel, California, Saturday, December 5, 2015. Mr. Brabeck, a retired petrophysicist, filed a complaint in 2011 to the Medical Board of California stating that his doctor Dr. Steven Mangar overprescribed him controlled substances. In September 2011, Mr. Brabeck learned that Dr. Mangar had hired a private investigator to watch him and had given the investigator all of his medical records. Mr. Brabeck immediately filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights but ultimately was disappointed with how OCR dealt with the doctor's actions.

Read the article HERE.

Rachel Miller for The San Francisco Chronicle

Rachel Miller poses for a portrait at her home in Redding, California, Saturday, August 22, 2015. Mrs. Miller, a Redding lawyer and pregnant mother,  is due to give birth by C-section on Sept. 29 and wants to have her doctor perform a tubal ligation that the hospital, Mercy Medical Center in Redding, refuses to allow because of Catholic doctrine. Her ACLU lawyer says she'll sue if the hospital doesn't change its mind.

Nail Salons for The New York Times

Esthetician Hue Nguyen teaches a nail salon class at the International College of Cosmetology in San Francisco. Ms. Nguyen says that after working for four years at a nail salon, she got breast cancer that is now in remission. Now, she is devoted, as she says, to "let every manicurist know the dangers of the the chemicals and help them have a good environment to work in."

Read more of Sarah Maslin Nir's great story. See my archive of photographs here.