Front and Center: Jasmine and Fred Kency
Published on Wednesday, February 9, 2022
By: Ruth Cummins
Editor's Note: In honor of Black History Month’s 2022 theme, Black Health and Wellness, we want to celebrate the contributions, breakthroughs and cultural richness of Black professionals and students at UMMC. See more Front and Center features.
Dr. Jasmine Kency takes care of children at home, and children at work.
Her husband, Dr. Fred Kency, does the same.
The married parents of three kids are an integral part of patient care at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Their patients stretch from the Adult Emergency Department, where Fred Kency is an emergency medicine physician, to the Grants Ferry Clinic in Flowood, where Jasmine Kency sees children and adult internal medicine patients.
“Most of my time is spent in the outpatient setting,” said Jasmine Kency, an assistant professor of medicine who recently was named medical director of the Office of Patient Experience. “I see newborns for checkups, and my oldest patient is 99.”
She’s also a familiar face at UMMC’s internal medicine clinic on Lakeland Drive. At both locations, she supervises internal medicine and medicine-pediatrics residents, and she also helps train them during rounds in University Hospital.
Fred Kency, an assistant professor of emergency medicine, gives care during 12-hour shifts to patients at UMMC’s Adult Emergency Department and those at another local ER.
“We can literally see anyone from a child coming in with a cold to someone having a heart attack to someone who was in a car wreck,” he said. “I like the variety of what I’m going to see every day. The oldest patient I’ve seen was 106.”
The couple met as medical students at the University of South Alabama. Jasmine Kency, a native of Huntsville, Ala., accepted a residency at UMMC in 2011. Jackson native Fred Kency continued his medical training through service in the U.S. Navy before joining his wife at the Medical Center for an emergency medicine residency in 2015.
They’ve been here ever since.
Jasmine Kency said Dr. Jimmy Stewart, professor of medicine and associate dean for Graduate Medical Education, was one of her mentors.
“He taught me to make sure that what I did brings me joy,” Kency said. “I truly love working with our residents and being part of their journey in medicine, and to be a role model and mentor to them.”
“I like the attachment to the medical students, and the ability to give back and sow seeds in the next generation,” Fred Kency said. “It’s very important that students see people who look like them and know there are opportunities for them.”
Family life with children ages 7, 5 and 3 “is very chaotic, but fun chaos,” Jasmine Kency said. “It’s definitely an adventure every day in the Kency house.”
The couple finds time for their shared love of Netflix. “I’m a huge Netflix geek,” Fred Kency admits. “I’m a country boy who likes to hunt and fish and be outdoors.”
“The beauty of Netflix is that it’s on your own time,” Jasmine Kency said. “When I’m trying to wind down, I find a Netflix series to binge on. And every now and then, some retail therapy."