Crystal Shelnutt

Crystal Shelnutt, MPH, NRP, is a paramedic, educator, public health professional, and trauma systems leader with more than 20 years of experience in emergency medical services. She currently serves as Regional Trauma System Development Manager for the Georgia Trauma Commission, where she works across Georgia’s ten EMS regions to strengthen the connection between prehospital care and the statewide trauma system.
Crystal began her career in EMS after taking an EMT course at the suggestion of her father, a firefighter. What initially started as preparation for medical school became a career in prehospital medicine. Her experience working on ambulances in rural communities gave her a firsthand view of the challenges created by limited resources, long transport distances, workforce shortages, and gaps between EMS and the larger healthcare system.
Her career has included frontline EMS, education, program leadership, and regional trauma system development. She previously directed EMS programs at Athens Technical College and founded an EMS and public-safety education company. She earned her Master of Public Health in Disaster Management from the University of Georgia in 2022 while continuing to work in EMS and serving as an Athens-area trauma coordinator.
At the Georgia Trauma Commission, Crystal has helped lead several statewide initiatives aimed directly at EMS. She directed Georgia’s first comprehensive statewide EMS educational needs assessment, which gathered more than 1,200 responses to identify training needs and gaps across the state. Her work also includes expansion of Stop the Bleed education, rural trauma education, EMS workforce development, and efforts to advance and standardize prehospital blood programs in Georgia.
Despite working at the system level, Crystal has maintained a connection to frontline EMS, including work as a rural 911 paramedic. That combination of field experience, education, public health, and statewide trauma-system work gives her a perspective that reaches from the ambulance to the hospital and into the policies and programs that shape how trauma care is delivered across Georgia.