Lauren Kjolhede, DO

Meet Lauren Kjolhede, DO

Dr. Lauren Kjolhede grew up actively playing sports (soccer, basketball, volleyball and cross country) and experienced numerous injuries through the years. With a fierce competitive nature and desire to understand how the body worked, she often read all that she could about the body, in an attempt to self-diagnose and estimate how long it would take for her to recover and get back on the field or court. Combine this inquisitive nature with a love of teaching others and a desire to help others, and she discovered that medicine was the right path for her. Pediatrics as a field is diverse, with a large spectrum of patients to see and care for and the opportunity to truly help children grow up as healthy as possible and realize their true potential. As a pediatric hospitalist, she enjoys being able to see patients of all ages from a healthy newborn to a teenage patient to a kindergartener all within the same day, all with different needs and ways to help care for them.

Dr. Kjolhede enjoys partnering with families to foster their children’s growth, development, and interests, during times of health and in sickness. She values the privilege to help parents of newborns step into their new role as parents with knowledge and confidence. She considers herself privileged to help patients and their families on some of their toughest days when getting admitted to the hospital. Her goal is always to empower families to understand their child, their development and any potential illness or diagnosis. She then strives to partner with families and other medical team members (subspecialists, nurses, therapists, etc.) to create the best treatment plan and follow up after leaving the hospital. She finds it joyful when she's able to send children and their families out of the hospital after recovering and seeing their child’s personality and energy come back.

She brings that same competitive nature from her early days in sports and channels it to provide the best possible care for San Antonio’s children. "I am excited to be back at CHRISTUS Children’s after a year of adventure “Up North” in Detroit, Michigan, for my husband’s fellowship in interventional cardiology. This is a homecoming after my medical training here in San Antonio with Baylor College of Medicine from 2016-2019, then working as an attending from 2019-2023," she said.