Erin Andrews, PhD, is recognized with this APA Citizen Psychologist Presidential Citation for her leadership in advocacy and informing policy, practice and education about disability issues and the needs of underserved parents with disabilities.
Andrews served as a board member for the International Child Amputee Network (I-CAN) from 2009-13. I-CAN is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting education, support, information and empowerment to traumatic and congenital limb different children and their families via mentors helping families, parents helping parents, and kids helping kids.
Andrews co-created the Disabled Parenting Project (DPP) in 2015. DPP is an online community by and for parents and prospective parents with disabilities. The DPP serves as an information clearinghouse and interactive space for discussion and connection among a highly marginalized and disenfranchised group: parents with disabilities. This program includes a digital and participatory action research component, where parents are invited to tell their stories in their own voices through video interviews that are uploaded and available online with the goal of furthering discussion and informing policy, practice and education about disability issues and the needs of underserved parents created by and for the community, that will set the stage for additional research and social action to address the important issues of discrimination and disparities. Andrews continues to be an important part of the DPP and is described by one of her co-founders as “a tireless advocate and uses her psychology training to further her important work.”
Andrews was invited to participate in a series of U.S. congressional briefings in 2013 on the rights of parents with disabilities, specifically the National Council on Disability Report Rocking the Cradle: Ensuring the Rights of Parents with Disabilities and Their Children. In 2016, she was a participant in the White House Forum on the Civil Rights of Parents with Disabilities.
Andrews is a 2008 graduate of the clinical psychology doctoral program of Wright State University. She has spent her professional career within the Veterans Administration system, first at the James A. Haley VA medical center in Tampa, Florida, for both her internship and post-doc; then the Olin E. Teague VA medical center of Central Texas Veterans Health Care System (CTVHCS), in Temple, Texas; and now the Austin Outpatient Clinic also of CTVHCS, but in Austin, Texas. She currently holds the positions of co-director of psychology training and acting site chief.
In addition, she is also a clinical sssociate professor at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School and an adjunct associate professor at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine.