Kela Henry

MD, MCPHU 1999

As a primary care physician at Emory Buford, Georgia, Kela Henry, MD (“Dr. Kela”), sees patients ranging from teenagers to the elderly on a day-to-day basis. However, her passion project is the second pillar of her work: serving as an education and health advocate for teenage girls, particularly those of color.

“That started to crystallize several years ago as I began to encounter more teenage girls in my practice and I found that I have a love for that population,” says Dr. Kela, who added that she can relate to teenage girls because she was once in their shoes.

At the time, she noticed a lot of her patients and their parents were coming to her with questions around sex and you could, ‘cut the tension in the room with a knife.’ She realized that there needed to be more conversations with adolescents around this topic -- conversations that she was grateful to have as a teen.

“Thank God I had a very open-minded and forward-thinking father,” says Dr. Kela. “He talked to me, and he was very realistic. Because of that, I understood that sex was a part of life, and that I should have rules, expectations, and boundaries.”

In addition to sex and relationships, other emerging topics she addresses are education and mental health – the latter a byproduct of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. “Pediatric literature shows that there was an increase in anxiety and depression, especially during 2020, and an increase in suicide attempts among teenage girls,” she says.

Dr. Kela’s passion for working with teenage girls is rooted in her strong belief that it takes a united community to help build children into responsible, confident, well-adjusted, and productive citizens.

She tackles these complicated topics in a number of ways including in her weekly series, Let’s Talk Teens with Dr. Kela, which airs on her social media channels. In it, Dr. Kela hosts grounded, educational conversations with teenage girls and their parents, and highlights the incredible accomplishments of her frequently invited young guests.

In addition, she is the author of the award-winning book “Nia and the Numbers Game, A Teenager’s Guide to Education, Relationships & Sex” which uses a mixture of fact and fiction to guide girls, especially those of lower-economic families, through the often-daunting process of maintaining self-esteem, navigating romantic relationships and applying for colleges.

And with her sights set on a second book and the possibility of a television series in the future, Dr. Kela shows no signs of slowing down.

“My overall mission is to provide teenage girls with relatable and relevant info to help raise their self-esteem. I want to champion and encourage teenage girls to become productive adults who can run this world and be the leaders they were born to be,” she says.

This spring, Dr. Kela will celebrate her 25-year medical school reunion from the Drexel College of Medicine’s legacy school, the Medical College of Pennsylvania-Hahnemann University (MCPHU). She credits MCPHU for providing her with a solid medical education, access to state-of-the-art facilities and a supportive minority affairs department.

She is the 2023 recipient of the College of Medicine’s Boots Cooper, MD, Service Award, which honors graduates who have demonstrated dedicated service to their communities.

To learn more about Dr. Kela and the work she is doing to support and advocate for teenage girls of color, visit her website, letstalkteenswithdrkela.com. To join the weekly conversations on Let’s Talk Teens with Dr. Kela, Thursday nights at 7:30 p.m. EDT, on Instagram, follow @drkelahenry.