Andrew Springer, Dr.P.H., M.P.H.

Andrew Springer, Dr.P.H. is a tenured Associate Professor of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health-Austin, with over 20 years of experience in the design, implementation and evaluation of child and adolescent health promotion programs. He embraces an active community health praxis, which includes service on the Austin/Travis Community Health Improvement Plan and Children’s Optimal Health advisory boards. His research focuses on child and adolescent health promotion, with a specific interest in social-ecological influences on health risk and protective behavior in adolescents as well as participatory planning and evaluation methods. Dr. Springer has partnered with communities in the U.S. and Latin America throughout his public health career with the aim of reducing health disparities and increasing opportunities for healthy living. His projects have included conducting among the first youth risk behavior studies in El Salvador; partnering with youth in central Texas to explore health needs, assets and opportunities for community health improvement; assessing the protective effect of school connectedness for reducing risk behavior in Colombian, Salvadoran, and Texan youth; and co-developing the environmental asset assessment framework and health promotion interweaving into context design method. Dr. Springer is a passionate teacher, with graduate-level courses that include health promotion program planning and community health promotion theory and practice. Since 2015, he has also held an adjunct faculty position in the Master of Health Psychology Program at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Cali, Colombia, and since 2020, with the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia in Popayan, Colombia.