PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Delana Wardlaw and Elana McDonald are two of a kind: They’re identical twin sisters who are both physicians in Philadelphia.
“We’re kind of like the girls next door,” said Wardlaw, “but we are also well-qualified, educated physicians who are the girls next door that people can come and have a conversation with and ask next questions. And that’s really the purpose — to make people feel comfortable to be able to ask questions and get their questions answered, and allow them to become self-advocates for health care.”
The Strawberry Mansion natives are known as the Twin Sister Docs. Their community inspired them to help build access to quality, equitable health care and education for underserved Black and brown communities. Wardlaw practices outpatient medicine as a family physician for Temple Health in Nicetown. McDonald has three outpatient pediatric practices — in Port Richmond, Kensington and the Northeast.
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Outside of their day jobs, the sisters spend countless hours operating vaccine clinics, mentoring students and empowering their communities through medicine.
“Unfortunately, we live in a world where inequality still exists,” said Wardlaw. “And unfortunately, African-Americans carry a heavy burden of many diseases. And a lot of it has to do with lack of access to quality care or lack of access to proper food or nutrition, so we have to make sure that we are addressing these things.”
At the start of the pandemic, the sisters began using their social media platforms to disseminate information, especially information about COVID-19, and later, the vaccine.
Over the past year, they amassed thousands of followers from all over the world who trust them for reliable information — adding to the thousands of kids across the city that they inspire through their work.
“We realize that in the African-American community and other communities, people are more comfortable with someone who looks like them and someone they think that they can relate to,” said McDonald. “We decided that we want to take our platform outside of our offices and broaden it to a local, regional and ultimately national and even global platform to broaden our net to address health care inequities, health care disparities. And the main goal of Twin Sister Docs is really to provide accurate information in a manner that the average individual can understand so it can spark a conversation with their physician.”
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While the twins have recently garnered a lot of attention, they have been advocating for equity in health care for more than 20 years, trying to build a pipeline of more diverse doctors.
“We also focus on mentorship and increasing and addressing the issues of cultural competency and diversity in medicine,” explained Wardlaw. “Unfortunately, we represent 2% of the physician population in the U.S. as African-American females, so we have got to increase those numbers. And, we need to diversify medicine by introducing it at all levels — elementary school, junior high schools, high schools, colleges, STEM courses and programs — making sure that students are aware that these are goals that they can reach.”
The sisters believe mentorship is important, as they are the first physicians in their family.
“It’s important for children to note that we came from neighborhoods just like yours,” added McDonald. “It’s possible.”