Dr. Kemper graduated from medical school at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she also earned a Masters degree in Public Health. She spent a decade in practice in Seattle, where at various times she worked with poor children living in urban areas, in emergency rooms and trauma centers and among patients in the burn unit of Harborview Medical Center. As a professor at the University of Washington Medical School, she taught medical students and residents how to be good doctors. Dr. Kemper is now on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School in the department of pediatrics.

Dr. Kemper's research has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine and Pediatrics. She is active in professional organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Ambulatory Pediatric Association, and was chosen as one of "America's Best Doctors" in 1996 and 1998. One of her foremost interests is communicating with the people she sees as "the primary providers of health care" for children — parents. To that end, she is the author of "The Holistic Pediatrician" (HarperPerennial, 1996, $18), a practical guide to therapies for the 25 most common childhood ailments.