Origin Story

Dear Dr. Jen

Dr. Jennifer Ashton reflects on her unexpected transition from an exhausted OB-GYN with two young children to a pioneering national network medical correspondent, explaining how television sharpened her clinical skills and expanded

Key takeaways

• Dr. Jen Ashton spent 18 years as ABC News' Chief Medical Correspondent, becoming the first woman to hold that role at major networks like CBS and ABC.
• She deployed to Haiti 48 hours after the 2010 earthquake, providing frontline medical care for eight days while covering the disaster for CBS.

Main topics

• Transition from clinical OB-GYN to national television correspondent
• High-stakes medical journalism (Haiti earthquake, COVID-19 pandemic)

Notable quotes

"The entire floor of the operating room was covered in blood, all red. It's a case I will remember for the rest of my life."

Conclusion

Dr. Ashton's origin story underscores how unexpected career pivots, personal resilience, and a commitment to

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) There was more blood on the floor than paint. The entire floor of the operating room was covered in blood, all red. It's a case I will remember for the rest of my life. Speaker 2 (0:13) Chief Medical Correspondent. Always love your advice. Here Speaker 1 (0:16) to set the record straight, Dr. Jen Ashton. Who's Speaker 2 (0:18) been with us every step of the way. America's Speaker 1 (0:20) favorite doctor's with us now. Speaker 1 (0:25) For almost 20 years, it was my job to take complex medical topics and distill them down to anywhere from 20 to 180 seconds. I knew that wasn't enough. I knew you wanted a deep dive and not a flyby. Now we have unlimited time and we are definitely going to use it. Welcome to my podcast, Dear Dr. Jen. I know you're probably thinking, why does someone go from national network television to a podcast? Well, the answer is pretty simple. I like to talk, but I also like to listen. So in this podcast, it is going to be about the questions that you have brought to me, your concerns, your thoughts, your opinions, as well as professional medical insights, analysis, and perspective. That's what we're going to be doing here at Dear Dr. Jen. For this first episode, I really wanted to start with an introduction to my life and my career because I think it's really important to know the messenger behind the message. So I get questions all the time about my career as an OBGYN and as an obesity medicine specialist, but I also get questions about my personal life, about being a mom. about my career as a national television network medical correspondent, and now I get questions after starting my own women's health company, Agenda. So I wanted to kick it off with this question from an Agenda Wellness Experiment member, Amanda. Dear Dr. Jen, you delivered my baby over 10 years ago. I cannot believe that. Then I watched you on TV, and now I follow what you're doing with Agenda. Did you always plan to have a career like this or did it just happen? It definitely just happened. File this one under sometimes the biggest things in life are not the things that we plan. They're the things that just happen to us. And it's a combination of luck and timing and hard work. When I think about where I was in 2006, when I started in national television, I had two very young children. I was in my first couple of years in practice as an attending in OBGYN. The only thing I was reading or watching on television was either cartoons. At that time, it was Elmo and Baby Einstein, or I was reading medical information. I couldn't have been less interested in being on television. I was more interested in getting as much sleep as I could because I was literally exhausted around the clock. And then I met someone through my children's school who was involved in television. To make a long story short, I was asked to be on television one... random Saturday. And two weeks after that, I was offered a contract at Fox News Channel. At that time, I was the first woman medical contributor. And I spent three years there and then signed with network television in 2009. And I found by accident that I was effective at communicating medical information. And I really, really enjoyed it. And there's no question. that what I did in national television for 18 years made me better in my practice taking care of real patients because it forced me to be current every single day in medical news that there is zero chance I would have been current in if I had just been a doctor in practice because there's no time. Sadly, it's not because doctors in private practice or at a major medical center don't want to be current. They do want to be current. It's just there's no time in the day. But for me, it was part of my job to be current and talk about and read about these studies and these events in medicine. And so what I did in television made me better in my office. But what I did in my office with talking to real women. for almost 20 years made me better on the air. People used to ask me all the time, you know, is it scary to be on a set? You know, how did you learn to be on television, on live national television? And I would always say it's not really scary because I speak the same way on a television set when a camera is on and I'm speaking to millions of people as I did. in my medical office when I was speaking to one person. I think that that was a really unexpected twist in my life, in my career, that I think I kind of file under the category of be open-minded to trying new things, even if you're not expecting them or planning for them, or even maybe even initially interested in them, because you never know what's going to come of it. And I am so glad that I... had that curiosity back then in 2006 because the experiences that I've had in national television, absolutely, I would have never in a million years expected to have those kind of experiences when I was in medical school. I feel really fortunate to have been able to have those experiences, but I feel more fortunate that I was able to make such a difference in so many people. I mean, when you're in medical school, you... I think hopefully, I know I did, had the goal of having an impact on people's lives, on the lives of women and their health. And most people in medical school measure that in how many individual patients they're going to see. I consider myself so fortunate because I can count those thousands of patients that I actually provided direct medical care for, but I can also count millions and millions of people who... heard perspective and insight and analysis and interpretation on medical topics that they were able to use in their own lives and their own health. And those are people that I'll never meet, but I've heard from. And it was an incredible honor and responsibility that I was able to do that for almost 20 years. A lot of what shapes your health isn't anything you can see or feel. For me, it was my mercury level. I've eaten fish. constantly. I always thought of it as one of the smartest things I do. But when I finally checked, my mercury came back high. Today, exposure is pretty normal. BPA from plastics, PFAS from packaging, mercury from fish. It's all measurable. Two markers give you a clear starting point, lead and mercury. My number surprised me. I had no idea it was building up. Check your health the way I do. Function provides 160 lab tests for about a dollar a day and member pricing on advanced imaging. Plus, the ability to dive deeper into your results with Function's trusted connections to platforms you already use, like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Join at functionhealth.com backslash Dr. Jen Ashton and use the code DrJen, that's D-R-J-E-N, for a $50 credit. When it comes to gaps in women's healthcare, menopause is among the most significant. The co-founders of Alloy Health experienced it firsthand, from startling symptoms to dismissive doctors. So they created Alloy. It's an online platform where you connect with a menopause-specialized physician who can prescribe hormone therapy or whatever care is right for you. and deliver it to your door. New customers get 20 % off their first product order with code DRJEN, that's D-R-J-E-N. Head to myalloy, that's M-Y-A-L-L-O-Y.com today. This is a great question. What were some of the most impactful stories you covered as a medical correspondent? First of all, I have to say, I meet doctors all the time, and they're all so curious as to how an OBGYN was able to cover everything from E. coli poisoning to influenza and natural disasters, et cetera, and everything in between. The answer is that in medical school, we have to learn the whole body. So it's kind of... like being fluent in a language. And then anytime there's a story, a medical headline, a study, an event, et cetera, we do our own research. So we speak to specialists in that area so that then we can distill it down in a matter of seconds sometimes and explain it to millions of people on television. I will say that I was, by the way, the only OBGYN to ever hold the position that I held at ABC News or CBS when I was at CBS, even including NBC News. There's never been a woman's health expert as a chief medical correspondent. So that was an honor for me to be the first. I actually think that it's the best specialty to be a medical correspondent because The majority of topics that make air are in the field of women's health, whether it's pregnancies. So, you know, a famous person gets pregnant or there's a pregnancy study or story that's going to be guaranteed to be on the air the next day. When Kim Kardashian was pregnant, I talked about Kim Kardashian's uterus so many times and I've only met her once. I was not her doctor. But I was talking about her pregnancy complication. When Princess Catherine had Prince George, I did a special report. We broke into regular programming. I was sitting next to the late, great Barbara Walters. And we talked about Kate Middleton's labor and delivery. So women's health stories are always going to make headlines and be covered in the media. And so that... was squarely within my wheelhouse medically. And it was something that I thought was really great. But whether or not it was menopause guidelines or mammogram screening guidelines, you name it, these are the stories that are always on morning television, evening news, and everything in between because women's health always make news. I think in terms of specific events that I covered, Definitely Haiti would have to be up there. The earthquake in Haiti in 2010, I got down there 48 hours after and was there for eight days. I remember meeting my producer for the first time before we got on a plane to go down there. And we flew in on a private plane from the University of Miami that was sending a medical