Shairi R. Turner MD, MPH is the Chief Health Officer for Crisis Text Line, a Not-For-Profit volunteer-supported organization delivering crisis interventions using a text platform. She is responsible for guiding the organizations’ culture transformation at a time when it is at a necessary inflection point. Previously she served at Crisis Text Line as the Chief Transformation Officer and Chief Medical Officer. She provides oversight to the Crisis Supervision team and led many of the clinical policy and quality initiatives within the Organization. A Stanford graduate and a Harvard-trained Internist and Pediatrician with a Master of Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. Turner has a long history in organization transformation. In 2005 Dr. Turner was appointed as the first Chief Medical Director in the eleven-year history of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). She established the Office of Health Services that provided oversight of the provision of Health, Mental Health, Disability and Substance Abuse services to the nearly 100,000 justice-involved youth. During her tenure with the Department of Juvenile Justice, Dr. Turner’s focus also included the impact of childhood trauma (physical, sexual and emotional abuse) on youth involved in the juvenile justice system, as well as the importance of gender specific services designed to meet the unique needs of girls in the system. She has given numerous presentations nationally on issues relating to health/mental health care in the juvenile justice setting. She was instrumental in the introduction of trauma-informed care to DJJ.
As the Deputy Secretary for Health and Interim State Surgeon General for the Florida Department of Health (DOH), she led the legislatively mandated reorganization for one of the largest state public health departments in the country. After her departure, she was a faculty consultant for the National Center for Trauma Informed Care where she performed numerous national trainings on the neurobiology of trauma to state and local entities including mental health and criminal/juvenile justice administrators and staff. Dr. Turner was the Project Co-Director for the U.S. Office on Women’s Health-funded Trauma Informed Care e- Cases, a comprehensive series of online virtual patient cases targeting primary care providers these cases are focused on effective approaches to the care of patients who have survived traumatic life experiences such as sexual assault, interpersonal and community violence, military sexual trauma, child abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction. She has presented internationally on the neurobiology of trauma (Shanghai, China). She currently also holds a Research Faculty appointment at the Florida State University, College of Social Work and is a Voluntary Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Miami, Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine. The native of New York City earned an undergraduate degree in Biology from Stanford University in 1991, a Doctor of Medicine degree from Case Western University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio and in 1996 she was also inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honors Medical Society. Dr. Turner then completed the four-year Harvard Combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics Residency Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Children's Hospital of Boston in 2000. From 2001 to 2002, she was a Commonwealth Fund/Harvard University Fellow in Minority Health Policy and earned a Master of Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health with a concentration in Health Policy and Management. She is married and the mother of two teenage student-athletes.
