Samantha Turner PhD, RN
Samantha Turner (she/her) is an affiliate trainee at PolicyLab at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), a registered nurse, and a postdoctoral fellow in the Eating Disorder Assessment and Treatment Program at CHOP. Her research centers around equitable access to eating disorder prevention, screening, diagnosis and treatment, particularly for adolescents in marginalized bodies. She aims to restructure the eating disorder assessment and treatment landscape to include all of those who can benefit and sees nursing as a discipline well-suited to this challenge.
Dr. Turner received a her bachelor's degree in nutrition and dietetics from Simmons University and her nursing degree and PhD in nursing from UMass Chan Medical School. During her training, her research focused on weight stigma in pediatric health care and eating disorder treatment, as well as policy approaches to reduce the prevalence of disordered weight control behaviors among children and adolescents.
Clinically, Dr. Turner has worked as a pediatric nurse in primary care, school settings and outpatient eating disorder programs. She has collaborated with the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she researched predictors of and novel strategies to reduce disordered weight control behaviors.