March 1 2022
Celebrate International Women’s Month with the “Authors Between the Covers” show: Meet Olivia Campbell and learn about “Women in White Coats: How the first women doctors changed the world of medicine”
A Note from Hope Katz Gibbs, producer and founder, Inkandescent Radio — What an honor it is to interview Olivia Campbell, a journalist and author specializing in medicine and women. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, The Cut, and many others.
Her new book is Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine. It is featured in the March 2022 issue of The Costco Connection. I have been writing for this monthly magazine since 1996 and have the privilege of writing this author interview article about Olivia and her book!
In our podcast, you’ll learn:
- All about Olivia’s career as a journalist and author who specializes in writing about medicine, women, history, and nature
- How and when she knew she wanted to pursue this topic as a book
- What in her research surprised her most
- What delighted her, and what upset her
- Any misconceptions about early women doctors that she wants to set straight
- Lessons that contemporary physicians can learn from the three women doctors featured in the book
- What she wants all of us, as patients, to know about doctors and medicine
First, a little more about Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine
This remarkable story will equally enchant fans of Hidden Figures and Radium Girls. We meet three Victorian women who broke down barriers in the medical field to become the first women doctors. They revolutionized the way women received health care and changed the way women looked at what was possible for themselves, their sisters, and their daughters.
In the early 1800s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided receiving medical care. Examinations performed by male doctors were often demeaning and even painful. In addition, women faced stigma from illness—a diagnosis could significantly limit their ability to find husbands, jobs, or be received in polite society.
Motivated by personal loss and frustration over inadequate medical care, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and Sophia Jex-Blake fought for a woman’s place in the male-dominated medical field. For the first time, Women in White Coats tells the complete history of these three pioneering women who, despite countless obstacles, earned medical degrees and paved the way for other women to do the same. Though very different in personality and circumstance, together, these women built women-run hospitals and teaching colleges—creating for the first time medical care for women by women.
With gripping storytelling based on extensive research and access to archival documents, Women in White Coats tells the courageous history these women made by becoming doctors, detailing the boundaries they broke of gender and science to reshape how we receive medical care today.
About Olivia: “I started writing as a young girl — mysteries fashioned after her beloved Nancy Drew,” noting that as a teen, her passion for ballet saw her train to become a professional dancer. A broken foot prompted Campbell’s pivot to arts journalist. An unplanned pregnancy, complicated birth, and postpartum depression turned her writing interest from the arts to a medic in college.
Today, she is an independent journalist, essayist, and author focusing on the intersections of medicine, women, history, and nature. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, New York Magazine/The Cut, HISTORY, The Washington Post, The Guardian, SELF, Aeon, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, Literary Hub, Atlas Obscura, Good Housekeeping, Catapult, Parents, and Undark, among others. Visit her journalism portfolio here.
Olivia’s first book, Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine, was published in March 2021 by HarperCollins/Park Row Books.
She holds a master’s degree in nonfiction science writing from Johns Hopkins University and an undergraduate degree in journalism from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers. Campbell lives in the Philadelphia suburbs along with her husband, three sons, and two beloved cats. Learn more at ocampbellwriter.com.
