2024 Outstanding Alumnus Award Winner
Henry E. McKay, III, grew up in Grenada, Mississippi, and obtained his undergraduate degree in Mathematics from the University of Mississippi in 1986.
As a graduate of the University of Tennessee College of Dentistry in 1990, he was active in the UTCOD student dental association as well as an ASDA national officer during this time.
Dr. McKay completed his Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery internship and residency at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, Tennessee, and his facial cosmetic surgery training at Northwest Hospital and Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. While there, he was heavily involved in several dental implant research projects and served on the resident organizational committee that founded the ROAAOMS in 1994.
He is co-founder of Alabama Oral and Facial Surgery in Birmingham, Alabama, and has been in private practice for over twenty-eight years. He is a member of the UTHSC College of Dentistry Alumni Board of Trustees and has served as chairman of the Student Recruitment Committee for three years. During this time, he is credited with introducing robotics to the school, which allowed UTCOD to be only the third dental school in the world to have robotics in their curriculum.
Dr. McKay has been actively involved in missions for most of his life, working on construction projects and Christian educational ventures in Honduras, Belize, and Guatemala. As a deacon at Briarwood Presbyterian Church, he led a dental team, largely comprised of students, to Nicaragua to offer his surgical skills with the underserved residents there. These projects exposed the students in the group to the field of dentistry as they trained and worked as dental assistants. As a result of this experience, several of their students have now become dentists themselves. As an extension of these efforts, Dr. McKay, along with his business partner at Alabama Oral and Facial Surgery, Dr. Christopher Rothman, have mentored over fifty local high school and college students in their offices. Over 98 percent of these students have pursued careers in their respective health care professions.
Dr. McKay continues to practice in Birmingham, where he is a board member of High Five Healthcare, a multi-award-winning company and one of the fastest growing health care companies in the Southeastern United States. He has been married to his wife, Sara Lynn, for thirty-two years, and they have two sons, Hal and Luke.
