Cynthia J. Mollen, MD, MSCE is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, an Attending Physician in the Division of Emergency Medicine (former Division Chief) at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), a founding member of PolicyLab at CHOP, and serves as a member of PolicyLab’s leadership team. Since joining the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and CHOP, Dr. Mollen has developed and refined a research and clinical interest in adolescent health, with a particular focus on utilizing the emergency department and non-primary care settings as sites for interventions related to major public health issues affecting adolescents, such as unintended teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.
Dr. Mollen has also pursued training in qualitative research methods, and has utilized those methods in a variety of research projects. Her projects have included interviewing adolescents to learn about their attitudes about developing an intervention aimed to improve the use of emergency contraception, exploring minority adolescents’ perception about bias when seeking family planning care, assessing the decision-making processes of parents with terminally ill children, and improving access to contraception for adolescents through emergency department-based interventions. Dr. Mollen completed both her pediatrics residency and pediatric emergency medicine fellowship at CHOP, and became a faculty member upon completing her training in 2001. She also completed her Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology during her fellowship.