Professor of Otolaryngology, Harvard Medical School, Director of Clinical Research and the Hearing Loss Program
Boston Children's Hospital
Dr. Kenna received her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her MD from Boston University School of Medicine. She completed a residency in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and did her Pediatric Otolaryngology Fellowship training at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine). Before coming to Boston in 1995, Dr. Kenna was on the full-time academic faculty at Children’s Hospital Pittsburgh and Yale University School of Medicine.
Dr. Kenna has been a member of the Pediatric Otolaryngology faculty at Boston Children’s Hospital since 1995. She co-founded the Boston Children’s Hospital Pediatric Cochlear Implant Program, and was its Director from 1995-2003. Since 2003, she has been the Director of Clinical Research in the Dept. of Otolaryngology, Boston Children’s Hospital, and is Director of the Hearing Loss Program. She completed a Master’s in Public Health degree (MPH) in the area of Clinical Effectiveness at the Harvard School of Public Health in 2005. Dr. Kenna’s early research concerned otitis media, especially chronic suppurative otitis media. Over the past 20 years she has focused on the etiologies of pediatric hearing loss, including genetic, congenital CMV, structural abnormalities of the inner ear, and hearing loss secondary to ototoxicity in patients with Cystic Fibrosis. She is a long-standing member of the Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Advisory Committee of the MA Dept. of Public Health, and is a founding member of the Harvard Medical School Center for Hereditary Deafness.