Cynthia Mollen
MD, MSCE

Faculty Member
Cynthia J. Mollen (she/her) is a founding member of PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). She is a professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, chief of the Division of Emergency Medicine at CHOP, core faculty leader for the Qualitative Research Core at CHOP, and a practicing pediatric emergency medicine physician at CHOP. 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 the Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology during her fellowship. 
  • Communicating research findings to a broad group of stakeholders, especially those whose lives can be most impacted by the findings, leads to more rapid change and benefits patients, families and communities.

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. She has also pursued training in qualitative research methods and has utilized those methods in a variety of research projects. Dr. Mollen’s 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 expedited partner therapy for adolescents.