Dr Danielle Jones

Dr Danielle Jones, also known as Mama Doctor Jones, is an American (OB/GYN) and doctor influencer. Across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, she has more than 2 million followers.

In this amusing and informative episode of the Better Together podcast, Dr Sam Hazledine finds out how Jones has built such a large and loyal following and uncovers the steps for other doctors looking to create a platform.

Dr Danielle Jones’  journey into medicine went a little differently from that of her peers. She originally planned to go into psychology until she realised that it wasn’t for her. 

“At the same time as I had this realisation, my dad was experiencing some complications and needed a lung transplant.”  

When her dad was very sick, Jones sat at his bedside, where she experienced a deeper calling. 

“I just looked at the people and thought the difference between good healthcare and bad healthcare is how it’s delivered, and I thought...I could be a good healthcare deliverer.” 

She realised she could learn science but also wanted to be a genuinely good doctor. “I wanted to learn to provide good care to families going through things that are terrible or sometimes wonderful.” 

After this, Jones decided to apply to medical school, and that is how she ended up where she is today.

Moving to New Zealand:

“I hope Jacinda is going to be my best friend!”

Jones jokes to Dr Sam Hazledine about the New Zealand prime minister. 

Jones and her husband first visited New Zealand in 2011. After that, they fell in love with the country and decided to move there one day.  

“We returned with the kids and rented an RV to travel the South Island. The kids loved it! We really fell in love with the culture, the lifestyle, and the people, and the things to do outside, so we decided to try and make the move. “

Due to the pandemic, the prospect of getting into the country was low, and Jones faced many roadblocks on the way (including the whole family catching COVID-19!).

“The Invercargill job opened up, and I applied. The people at Southland Hospital were wonderful and seemed like great people to work with which is why I ended up accepting the job.”

Social media:‍

Dr Danielle Jones got into social media in 2009. " It was very odd back then as a medical student to be blogging your way through med school or to be on Twitter.” 

She felt that back then, it wasn’t socially acceptable for doctors and that her peers found it unusual. 

At this time she didn’t have a goal for the account: “It was a creative outlet. I liked to write, so I just wrote about my experiences, and I quickly realised that Twitter was a really great place both for learning and for connecting.” 

Jones describes her social brand as “edutainment.” It is meant to be entertaining, and you leave after accidentally learning something. 

“I always wanted my presence online to be like if your best friend was a gynaecologist and you were at coffee talking about pap smears.”

Jones took a break from social media to have her twins and work, then in 2017, she started up again on Instagram under the Mama Doctor Jones brand. “My goal was really just to educate, and to advertise my practice - really quickly I noticed that there was a lot of growth happening that I hadn’t anticipated.”

When Jones realised she was on to something, she started making goals, and that’s when she started her YouTube channel. 

“I did have goals when I started YouTube, but I never thought it would be what it is today -  almost a million subscribers. It’s insane!”

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Tips for other doctors looking to grow a following:

Niche down: figure out who you’re talking to, and then what you will talk about comes pretty quickly. It doesn’t have to be one health topic; it can be an age. I speak to 20 - 30-year-olds. Try inventing an avatar for your niche and structure every post just for them.‍

Do it for the love: I have been so successful because I have a genuine interest in social media marketing! You have to enjoy it. Find something you love talking about, learn the platform, learn the algorithm, and learn the community!‍

Up-skill: I listen to podcasts about how to succeed on the platforms I use.  ‍

Keep showing up consistently: Sometimes people start, but they don’t keep showing up because it is a thankless job in the beginning. However, you need to keep going if you want to grow a following. ‍

Create valuable content: If you create valuable content for the person you are talking to, you will grow your platform.‍

Don’t try to be everywhere:  I wouldn’t start trying to be everywhere; it’s too much work. Start on one platform, and then you can branch out onto a new platform once you are comfortable there. ‍

Never fight in the comments: always take it to your platform if you want to debunk something. Sometimes, the comments are like a red rag at a bull, but they never end with you feeling like, “That was worth my time.”‍

Find your community: The OB/GYN community all support each other, and we are all friends; it’s not competitive. ‍

You can learn from fake medical influencers: I follow some of the accounts that share misinforming medical information because they are able to create content in a way that makes people want to push it out and share it. I learn from them. I also can use them to create content by debunking their myths. Often, these fake medical influencers are actually selling something: “Everything your doctor didn’t tell you!”

The benefits of social media: ‍

“Social media could never replace clinical medicine because I love being at the bedside, but I do feel that social media is much better for reaching way more people than you ever could on a clinical basis,” explained Jones.

“A single post reaches more people than I would ever reach in my clinical career, which is a huge opportunity and a big responsibility.”  

Jones is able to spend time on social media discussing topics like the COVID-19 vaccination and safety in pregnancy, which is valuable to people who aren’t getting enough information from their clinic visits and need a place to go where someone could actually sit down and explain the science. 

“The more doctors we get online, the more doctors we have speaking about evidence-based medicine, the better!”

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The downside of social media:

Jones explains how right now, there are a lot of hate-fuelled posts towards doctors, especially people talking about COVID-19 vaccinations, and you need a thick skin to deal with these. 

“People are saying the COVID-19 vaccine is going to take out the whole planet because it is meant for population control, but why would they want to take out their entire country? What good would that do? They won’t have people who are able to work. They won’t be able to do anything! This is capitalism -  they don’t want to kill you!” Jones laughs. 

Jones admits that sometimes she struggles with decompartmentalising “I am constantly checking messages. I used to try to respond to everyone, but now I do my best. I get 1-2 thousand messages a week, and that doesn’t even count comments.” 

Jones explains that her “edutainment” style is not the same as that of some other doctors on social media, and it sometimes negatively affects the kind of media opportunities she gets because people want the “serious doctor.”

“I am not the uppity doctor on CNN, but I feel like my reach on a person-to-person level is so much greater that I don’t care.”

Jones has one assistant who helps her with Facebook content, but she does 99% of everything else herself (to put this in perspective, Dr Hazledine points out that she is managing an audience half the size of New Zealand!). 

Dr Danielle Jones isn’t afraid to call out misinformation online, but she picks fights with ideas and not people. 

Although she commands an audience of over 2 million, her primary goal in life is to be a “good person and a good mum.”

Audiences across the world have taken to her because she talks to them like they’re “real people, which they are!” 

I get emails like, “I’ve never got a pap smear, and now I’ve gone because I understand why it is important.” 

The transgender community has been incredibly helpful to me in learning how to use more gender-neutral language, especially when talking about a field that has been so traditionally “gendered.” Jones gets messages saying:

“your platform is the only place which I feel like I can come and learn about gynaecological health as a trans man or as a non-binary person. Everywhere else just gives me such bad dysphoria.” 

“I think that it is really important that those people have equal access to education,” Jones explains. 

If Jones could go back to her 18-year-old self she would say: “learn Spanish. It will be extremely valuable for delivering labours in South Texas!” and also, “You don’t have to be perfect. You are smarter than you give yourself credit for; do what is right and follow your gut, and you’ll make it.” 

Listen to the podcast episode:

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Dr Danielle Jones, known online as @mamadoctorjones, is a multi-channel social influencer with a couple of million followers. She’s an American (OB/GYN) living and working in Southland, New Zealand. When she spoke out about abortion rights on her public platforms, she received hate messages and lost followers, but that didn’t stop her advocacy. 

Danielle uses her platform to address the challenging areas of medicine in a very engaging way. She also uses her platform for advocacy. 

When the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was announced in the US, we thought that a former US doctor who practised in the state of Texas and a gynaecologist could shed more light on the situation. 

It was essential to get Dr Jones back onto the This Generation podcast with Dr Sam Hazledine to discuss this decision, what it means for women in the US, and what those outside of the US can do to help. 

‍Roe V. Wade:

On the 24th of June 2022, the US Supreme Court ended constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place for almost 50 years in a decision by its conservative majority to overturn Roe v. Wade. At the time of writing this, the decision has led to abortion bans in nine of the 50 states, with a prediction of more to follow. 

“It’s obviously concerning for a lot of reasons, but the primary reason is that it's going to lead to worse outcomes,” explained Danielle. 

The decision, which seemed unthinkable to many Kiwis, was the culmination of decades of campaigns by abortion opponents, made possible by an emboldened right side of the court that has been supported by three appointees of former US President Donald Trump.

Danielle and other doctors took to social media to share their outrage when the decision broke. 

“We know that banning abortion does not make anyone safer. It only increases the riskiness of procedures that people seek, and delays care to a point where abortions are happening later and later because of inability to access care earlier in the pregnancy.” 

Dr Danielle Jones grew up in a very conservative area of Texas (one of the states that supports the ban).

“I didn't come to a conclusion about things like this on my own...I felt like I was given my ideas and opinions about it as I was growing up.” 

Now Danielle has a platform and a voice. "It became more and more important to me as I got to a place online where I had a voice and where I was in a space where it was safe…It took a long time to really unlearn and re-establish my feelings on this topic….I've been given a platform and hope to use it for the right purposes.” 

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Advocacy and abortion rights:

Regarding advocacy, Dr Danielle Jones says that using her voice for education is her number one priority.

“I work in a field where many things we do are very taboo. People aren't often taught about sex-ed about their own body, about abortion, about seeking abortion in times of dire stress.” 

Danielle wants to be an Internet educator and someone who can reliably convey scientific and evidence-based information in a way that people actually want to consume. 

“I think to really get your point across, you have to be able to explain things in a way that doesn't bore people in the process.” 

Since Danielle started speaking out on the Roe v. Wade decision, her fans have commented, “I really like your content, but you're too political now.”

She explains, “I will stop talking about politics when politics is not in my exam room with my patient.” 

“I didn't choose for politics to come in and start messing with how I can take care of my patients. They forced us into that, and I won't be silent because somebody else has made it my problem. So I will continue to talk about anything, including politics, as long as it affects my patients.” 

Danielle admits that because of her platform, she often feels pressure to speak out about these things. “A voice says, it's your duty. You need to be speaking about this to other people who are silent.” 

Living in New Zealand, it’s easier for Danielle to have a voice on these issues, but she also remembers what it was like for her in Texas.

“I can put myself back in a position where I had a private practice in Texas. My literal safety and my patient population were threatened by me being open about how I felt or advocating for topics like this that were not acceptable in that environment.”

So, she thinks that where doctor advocacy is concerned, "we have to deal with the issue of whether you are safe speaking about it.”

“I think that part of the problem that the United States has right now is these stringent boxes because I will often hear people say, I'm pro-life, I vote pro-life, but if you want to have an abortion, that's not my business...So I don't like the labels. I'm not here to tell anybody what the ethical choice would be or what I would do because it doesn't matter what I would do at the very end of the day. I have a lot of money. I have a lot of social support." 

Dr Sam Hazledine agrees that these “labels are problematic.” “Let's call one pro-life because it feels hard not to be pro-life, doesn't it?” It suggests that if you're not pro-life, you’re pro-death. I mean, what are you?”

Danielle says that Sam has “hit the nail on the head.” “It was an intentional politicisation of this topic during the Reagan administration. It was intentionally made to be something that was clung to by religious people. Before that, most churches were not either stringently opposed or in support of termination in general. It was thought to be an individual's decision that had no place in day-to-day conversation. And it intentionally was made into a political pond to win votes after the Reagan administration.” 

Danielle opens up about how tough it has been. Since speaking up about abortion rights, she has had to ignore comments calling her a murderer (among other things).

What gets her through all the negativity is telling herself it is nothing compared to her patients and what they must go through.

“I had a patient when I was working in Texas who had a lethal fetal anomaly that wasn't diagnosed until 20 plus weeks, and it was cheaper for her to fly to Colorado, have her termination done there, stay in a hotel and fly back, then it would've been to get care in Texas. So that pales in comparison to me having to listen to a bunch of nameless facial city idiots call me names on the internet.” 

Danielle feels that these new laws won’t affect privileged Americans in the same way they will affect the lower-socio.

“I don't think these things will ever affect the people who put them into place, the politicians, their wives, their mistresses, their daughters. They can always access a termination if needed because they can just fly to another state.” 

She explains that some low socio-mothers living in a state like Texas may not have these options. 

“It would've been a 10-hour drive to get to another state, and that state may also not be offering abortion, not to mention they may be completely overloaded in their ability to care for people. So you can expect people to be able to take a week off work when they're already at a socioeconomic disadvantage, they're living in a place where they can't tell anyone why they're taking off work because they will be labelled as a murderer and just ostracised from their community. This is impractical. Of course, this isn't an option for most people.” 

She goes on to express her concerns about "the LGBTQ community and the ability of transgender people to access care and the ability of gender dysphoric children to access puberty blockers, which is a very evidence-based and safe intervention that has a lot of science behind it.”

“And now, you have political leanings coming in and trying to dictate how people get their medical care; it's absolutely insane!”

"I can't even hardly talk about it without getting frustrated because the amount of science we have on these topics and the importance of the ability to access care for both of these things is so evident in the literature – that it just boggles my mind!”

‍How can doctors help advocate:

"I think from the standpoint of having been there, that things that I could have done better when I was working in a place like Texas where my patients can get access to care were making sure that everybody who walked through my door knew that they were in a no-judgment zone and that they could talk to me about whatever they wanted."

Danielle stresses the importance of making your practice a safe place. “I had the experience of working in Texas and then moving to Hawaii to work there for a little while. Hawaii is much more liberal than Texas, and seeing how freely people came in and expected me to be a safe place.” 

Suppose you are a doctor in America, practising in one of the states where a ban is in place. She suggests “educating yourself on options and how to direct your patients to your front desk staff because people will get phone calls about, can I come there for help? And obviously, the answer is not now, but you need to be able to give them well…Here are your resources; here's what you can do.”

She urges New Zealanders and New Zealand doctors not to be complacent. “64% of the more conservative group of politicians (National) here voted against the legalisation of abortion rights.” 

“New Zealand is not safe. Don't get complacent. You have to get out there and use your voice.”

Other than that, Danielle suggests that “just continuing to speak out” is the best option. “Unfortunately, probably what it is going to take is somebody who is white enough and rich enough having a bad outcome (or losing their life) for people to realise that this was such a bad idea.”

“And unfortunately, before we get to that point, I think it will take a lot of people who don't look like that to suffer even worse outcomes before we end up having changed.” 

Danielle describes herself as "a relatively positive person,” but since the decision, “it feels a little bit hopeless…It feels like something really terrible’s going to have to happen before we make actual revisions.” 

Despite this, she remains focused on the difference she can make daily as a doctor. “Taking care of patients and being in the clinic make me feel like it is still worth it to be in this field despite so much contention.” 

Listen to the podcast:

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