By: Rebecca Bloom
ISBN: 979-8889832317
Broadleaf Books, 2025
2025 Sarton Finalist: Nonfiction
Giving women the tools to navigate a healthcare system not built for them.
More than twenty-five years ago, Rebecca Bloom left her post as an employee benefits and compensation lawyer at one of the most well-known New York City law firms to pursue her passion for women's health advocacy. Drawing on her expertise in the complex rules that govern employers, insurers, and medical providers—as well as the dynamics between these stakeholders—Bloom has spent decades empowering women to confidently integrate the information and focus fully on recovery and wellness.
In When Women Get Sick Bloom offers much-needed insight to women and their supporters, diving into essential topics such as building support networks, taming the insurance beast, communicating with doctors, and staying mindful. She exposes the way the healthcare industrial complex disadvantages women, and she empowers them to find the support they need.
Using women's stories and Bloom's own experience in the trenches, this book guides readers with examples, questions, checklists, useful information, and tips. There's enough stress and fear surrounding cancer and other serious illnesses. Bloom gives women tools to make the best decisions for them in all areas of their healthcare journey.
“Women contending with a difficult diagnosis will find Bloom's impassioned advocacy and solid mix of logistical and emotional guidance a boon.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“This informative, accessible guide will be helpful to anyone self-advocating for their health or that of a loved one.” ―Library Journal
About the Author
Rebecca Bloom is a Yale College and New York University School of Law educated patient and workplace advocate.
A former workplace and benefits attorney, Rebecca’s longest and proudest affiliation is with Bay Area Cancer Connections, where she has served as a patient advocate and healthcare, insurance and workplace advisor for women fighting breast and ovarian cancer for over 26 years. Rebecca was a contributing writer and editor for Breast Cancer in the Workplace, published by the Northern California Cancer Center in the early 2000s. The book has recently been updated, expanded and reissued by the Cancer Prevention Institute of California and is now titled Working with Cancer.
Rebecca serves as a listener, learner, supporter and advocate for the clients of Bay Area Cancer Connections, primarily one at a time but also in groups that she’s led and conferences where she’s presented. When she worked as a lawyer, her clients were companies, and she brings that perspective to her interactions with BACC clients and other people on whose behalf she advocates. Her knowledge of the complex rules that employers, insurers and medical providers follow, as well as the dynamics and incentives that exist between stakeholders helps her give the women she supports a constructive and comprehensive foundation so that they can integrate all available information with comfort and confidence and focus on recovery and wellness. Rebecca is also a professional storytelling coach, helping her clients get their stories told and shared.
To learn more about Rebecca Bloom and her work, please see www.whenwomengetsick.com
