Dr. Robert W. Turner II is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Clinical Research and Leadership, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Neurology, at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. He is the Chair of the Subcommittee on Community Engagement at the GW Institute on Brain Health and Dementia, also holds a position as a Research Scientist in the Center on Health & Society at Duke University and is a Faculty Fellow at the Global Sport Institute at Arizona State University. After attending James Madison University on an athletic scholarship, Dr. Turner played football professionally in the now defunct United States Football League (USFL), the Canadian Football League (CFL), and briefly in the National Football League (NFL) with the San Francisco 49ers. He is also the author of Not For Long: The Life and Career of the NFL Athlete (Oxford Press) and a consultant for the LeBron James produced HBO documentary film Student Athlete.
Dr. Turner’s current National Institute on Aging (NIA) funded K01 award examines the interrelationship between multiple measures of psychosocial and neurocognitive risk and protective factors associated with accelerated cognitive aging & mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), and Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) among former male collegiate athletes and professional football players. Additionally, he is the Principal Investigator (PI) for a NIA Health Disparities Administrative Supplement award to that assess caregiver burden by exploring whether the stress of being the primary caregiver of a person with dementia (PWD) produces cognitive dysfunction in adult and older adult Black American men. In January 2021 Dr. Turner received a NIA R13 grant award to host a 3-year Super Bowl conference entitled, “Black Male Brain Reserve, Resilience & Alzheimer’s Disease.”