Kera McNelis, MD, MS

Dr. Kera McNelis completed medical school at Case Western Reserve University, where she had her first experience with neonatal nutritional and necrotizing enterocolitis research. She completed pediatric residency at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, and then moved to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) for neonatology fellowship. In fellowship, she continued to focus on body composition and growth. She also completed a Master of Science degree in Clinical and Translational Research at University of Cincinnati (UC), while examining the nutritional impacts on body composition of very low birth weight infants, including donor breast milk and prolonged parenteral nutrition exposure. Her first faculty appointment was at CCHMC and UC, and she continued further studies related to growth and body composition of different high risk populations. She moved to Emory University and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta in 2023.

She is currently exploring the interrelationship between body composition, oral feeding intake, and appetite regulating hormones in large for gestational age infants and conducting a randomized controlled trial to compare an innovative body composition-indexed feeding intervention versus standard feeding. Additionally, she is interested in neonatal intestinal failure.