Dr. Rebekah Fenton is the proud daughter of two first-generation college students and healthcare providers, to whom she credits her passion for education and medicine. Her father is a general pediatrician and mother is a nursing professor. Growing up, she heard her dad share stories about navigating conversations and confidentiality between adolescents and their parents in his office. These stories helped Dr. Fenton recognize the power of communication for education and empowerment.
She credits early experiences with mentoring/tutoring and her high school’s Speech and Debate team for helping her develop the communication skills she practices daily with patients. She decided that she wanted to focus her work with teens after witnessing the challenges her peers faced in adolescence and learned about the field of adolescent medicine in college through her first research mentor. In medical school, she discovered storytelling as a tool to educate peers and uplift marginalized communities.
Her educational pursuits have taken her all over the country: from her upbringing in Sacramento, CA and her undergraduate degree in Human Biology at Stanford University, to her medical school training at the University of Pennsylvania and pediatric residency at Seattle Children’s Hospital as part of the Resident Education and Advocacy for Child Health track. She completed an adolescent medicine fellowship at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and a master of public health with a concentration in Community Health Research at Northwestern University. She spent 3 years working at a federally-qualified health center in Chicago providing primary, school-based, and subspecialty care to adolescents before returning back to Northern California to practice general pediatrics and adolescent medicine.
Dr. Fenton’s advocacy and educational efforts focus on culturally-sensitive communication and health equity while spanning a wide range of adolescent medicine topics. She gives invited presentations from local to international audiences and her writing has been featured in The Washington Post, Forbes, Newsweek, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and several blogs. She has made multiple media appearances commenting on local and national stories. As she “follows her nose” to the topics that inspire her, she always centers communication and advocacy for those most in need.
Rebekah Fenton, MD, MPH, FAAP 