Dr. Cynthia Whitener has been on the faculty at Penn State College of Medicine (PSCOM) since 1994. She has served in a variety of leadership roles, including Hospital Epidemiologist, Chief of the Infectious Diseases Division, and Director of the HIV clinical program at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center (HMC). These roles, although primarily administrative, have also facilitated some of her scholarly work. She has had almost 30 years’ experience in HIV clinical research, previously participating as an investigator in the AIDS Clinical Trials Unit at PSCOM and currently serving as HMC principal investigator for HRSA federally funded Ryan White Care Act Part B and Part C grants. Two examples of HIV-related research projects include: a recent collaborative study with several programs in the greater Harrisburg area (Special Projects of National Significance, funded by HRSA) to develop a social media-based intervention tool to improve the HIV care continuum among young HIV-infected patients, and the second is a joint study with colleagues at Penn State University who are currently developing a simple, low-cost device for self-testing HIV viral loads, funded by NIH (Guan, PI). Once the device is ready, HMC patient volunteers will be trialing the device. In addition to HIV research, Dr. Whitener has considerable experience in healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), and has collaborated with the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for a variety of outbreak investigations that have been published. She contributed to the international guidelines for the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disseminated Mycobacterium chimaera infection following cardiac surgery cardiopulmonary bypass, a recent unusual worldwide outbreak related to contaminated heater-cooler units. Additionally, she and her colleagues have published on other aspects of infection prevention, including risk factors and outcomes for those with resistant organisms.

Dr. Whitener's clinical interests are General Infectious Diseases and HIV infection, as well as clinical quality improvement. She is also interested in highly infectious diseases preparedness (e.g., Ebola, SARS-CoV-2, others).

Dr. Whitener enjoys mentoring and educating medical students, residents, and fellows in clinical infectious diseases at the bedside and in small and large group settings.

Dr. Cynthia Whitener serves as a Hospital Epidemiologist, Penn State Health / Milton S. Hershey Medical Center

Fellow, American College of Physicians, 2014

Fellow, Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), 2003

Member, Infectious Diseases Society of America, 1989 - present

Diplomate, Subspecialty of Infectious Diseases - American Board of Internal Medicine, 1994 - 2024

Diplomate - American Board of Internal Medicine, 1991, 2001, 2011 certifications