Jennifer Block – Carol's Notebook

Author: Jennifer Block

Jennifer Block is an independent journalist who writes frequently about health, gender, and conflict of interest in medicine. Her articles and commentary have appeared in The Washington Post Magazine, Newsweek, The Cut, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, Pacific Standard, The Baffler, and many other outlets.

A reporter with Type Investigations (formerly The Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute), Jennifer won several awards for her investigative reporting on the permanent contraceptive implant Essure, which has since been discontinued. For early chapters of Everything Below the Waist, she won a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant.

Her first book, Pushed, led a wave of attention to the national crisis in maternity care and was named a “Best Book of 2007” by Kirkus Reviews and a “Best Consumer Health Book” by Library Journal.

Jennifer began her journalism career as an intern and then editor at Ms. magazine. She was also a senior editor at the sustainable lifestyle magazine Plenty, and an editor on the 2005 edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves. Since 2012 she has served as a mentor-editor and senior facilitator with The OpEd Project.

She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her son.

Everything Below the Waist by Jennifer Block was eye-opening. In the last few years, I've gone out of my way to see women doctors, they make me more comfortable and I feel like they listen better, but to be honest, I hadn't really thought beyond that. Block's focus is on women's reproductive health specifically, but she does talk about how doctors and the medical establishment treat women both now and historically. Female reproductive health covers a range of sub-topics, and Block laid out the facts thoroughly and specifically, citing studies from numerous medical journals. Covered here is routine gynecologic care, hormonal birth control, infertility treatment, abortion, pregnancy, and childbirth. Most women will find something in these pages they can relate to. Maybe in a good way, a birth that went well or having a skilled surgeon. Maybe it's being bullied by a doctor or given unnecessary tests. Maybe it's not being given all the information about whatever the pharmaceutical companies are...