Dr. Christopher Heron is interested in better understanding the interactions between clinicians, patients and technology in order to better support patient care and provider wellness. He is passionate about the use of clinical, electronic health record and population health data to improve efficiency and impact of healthcare interventions at both an individual and practice level. In parallel to his role as an educator, he is also interested in the educational process for graduate medical education and the impact of technology on clinician development. Dr. Heron works closely on telemedicine initiatives with an interest in remote healthcare delivery, especially in primary care.

In addition, Dr. Heron has also published clinical reviews, case studies and textbook chapters on a variety of subjects, including telemedicine, gastritis and GI bleeding, team-based management of complicated medical conditions and cardiac impacts of loperamide abuse.

Fellow, American Academy of Family Practice, 2020

Diplomate, American Board of Family Medicine, 2014

Dr. Christopher Heron is an experienced residency educator working as core faculty at the Penn State Health Family and Community Medicine Residency at Mount Nittany Medical Center in State College. He strives to help new clinicians provide efficient, high-quality care in multiple clinical settings through the effective use of information mastery, the electronic health record and compassionate patient care.

As a core faculty, he routinely precepts in the residency outpatient clinic, the hospital rounding service, and their volunteer free-clinic; as well as serving as an adviser and mentor for many of the family medicine residents. Dr. Heron supports many of the resident QI projects in his role with clinical informatics. He is also responsible for overseeing the didactic curriculum for the residents, which includes 5-7 hours per week of instruction on topics ranging from clinical medicine, hands-on procedural care, wellness and practice management.

Dr. Heron has experience instructing medical students as well, both in clinical and didactic settings. He routinely educates medical students on both inpatient and outpatient clinical services, and annually teaches a class he co-developed with a behavioral scientist to help medical students understand and process the impact of end-of-life care in their chosen patient population. Additionally, he routinely supports their transition to clinical education by training them in the use of information systems at Penn State Health.

Dr. Christopher Heron appreciates the broad scope of family medicine in the outpatient and inpatient clinical settings – treating patients from childhood to end-of-life through a wide range of settings, including telemedicine. He engages in work with informatics, population health and quality improvement in support of clinician practice with the electronic health record. Dr. Heron also enjoys working with practice management initiatives and supporting development of services such as integrated behavioral health.