Michelle Taylor, MD, DrPH, MPA

Dr. Michelle Taylor is the Shelby County Division Director for Health Services. In this role, Dr. Taylor leads the team that plans, organizes, and maintains public health programs and services for Shelby County. To that end, she leads the operation of the Shelby County Health Department, which is responsible for the delivery of all public health services and enforcement of applicable health codes and ordinances of Shelby County and applicable statutes and regulations of the Tennessee Department of Health. With a budget of $106 Million, and comprised of seven (7) bureaus and 701 employees, the Shelby County Division of Health Services is committed to the improvement of community health, providing expertise in population health, epidemiology, environmental health, maternal and child health, TB elimination, healthy food access through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and Commodities Supplemental Foods Program, sexual health treatment and counseling, infant mortality reduction, inmate health care oversight, and COVID-19 pandemic response.

Dr. Taylor is also a Lieutenant Colonel and Residency-Trained Flight Surgeon in the Tennessee Air National Guard. Before returning to Memphis, Dr. Taylor served on Active Duty for Operational Support and Statutory tours as the Credentialing and Privileging Branch Chief and the Division Chief for Aerospace Medicine in the Office of the Air National Guard Surgeon General, from 2019 to 2021. From 2014 to 2016, Dr. Taylor, a pediatrician, was Associate Medical Director and Deputy Administrator for Maternal and Child Health at the Shelby County Health Department, in Memphis, TN. In this role, she was responsible for the overall management of Maternal and Child Health Programs (MCH) and oversaw programs geared toward providing services to under-resourced families through home visitation, case management, and outreach education.

Dr. Taylor received her undergraduate degree from Howard University in 1997, her medical degree from East Tennessee State University, James H. Quillen College of Medicine in 2002, completed her pediatric residency at East Tennessee State University/Johnson City Medical Center and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center from 2002-2005, and earned her Master’s degree in Epidemiology from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in 2009. As a C. Sylvia and Eddie C. Brown Community Health Scholar, she received her Doctorate in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2015. In 2018, Dr. Taylor completed her Master’s degree in Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government as a Commonwealth Fund Mongan Fellow in Minority Health Policy.