La doctora explica la salud sexual.

Because doctora is the feminine form of doctor. Spanish usually marks nouns for gender, and the article changes too:

• el doctor = a male doctor
• la doctora = a female doctor

Since this sentence is about a female doctor, it uses la doctora.

Spanish uses definite articles much more often than English does.

Here:

• la doctora = the doctor
• la salud sexual = sexual health

Both doctora and salud are feminine singular nouns, so they take la.

In English, you might sometimes drop the, but in Spanish the article is often required where English would not use one.

Explica is the third person singular present tense form of explicar:

• yo explico = I explain
• tú explicas = you explain
• él/ella/usted explica = he/she/you explain(s)

Because the subject is la doctora (she), the verb must be explica.

Spanish often leaves out subject pronouns because the verb ending already tells you who the subject is.

So instead of saying:

• La doctora explica...

Spanish could also say:

• Ella explica...

But when the subject noun is already there, ella is unnecessary. This is very normal in Spanish.

In Spanish, adjectives usually come after the noun, unlike in English.

So:

• salud sexual = sexual health
• not sexual salud

This is one of the most common word-order differences between English and Spanish.

Yes, sexual is an adjective describing salud.

In this case, sexual does not change form. Some Spanish adjectives stay the same for masculine and feminine singular nouns:

• salud sexual
• educación sexual

But it would change in the plural:

• problemas sexuales = sexual problems

So here, singular sexual is correct.

Salud is simply a feminine noun in Spanish, so it takes la:

• la salud

Grammatical gender in Spanish does not always match biological sex or any logical category. It is just a property of the noun that learners need to memorise along with the word.

A useful habit is to learn nouns with their article:

• la salud
• la doctora

Yes, Spanish word order is often more flexible than English, but the normal order here is:

• La doctora explica la salud sexual.

You may sometimes see different orders for emphasis, but this standard subject + verb + object order is the most natural and neutral one for learners to use.

In standard Spain Spanish, explica is pronounced approximately eks-PLEE-ka.

A rough breakdown:

• ex- = like eks
• pli- = plee
• -ca = ka

The stress falls on pli: explica

Yes, in many contexts you could. Médica can also mean female doctor.

However, doctora is very common and natural, and depending on context it may specifically refer to someone with the title doctor. In everyday learner Spanish, la doctora is perfectly good and very common.

The base verb is explicar, which is the infinitive form.

In a dictionary, Spanish verbs are listed in the infinitive:

• explicar = to explain

So when you see explica, you should learn to connect it back to explicar. This is a key skill in Spanish, because verbs change form depending on the subject and tense.