Dr. Valerie Earnshaw Receives the 2025 Addiction Policy Forum Pillar of Excellence Award

The 2025 Addiction Policy Forum Pillar of Excellence Reward is awarded to Dr. Valerie Earnshaw

Presented annually, this award is to honor those in the field who have demonstrated exceptional leadership in improving our response to individuals with substance use disorders and communities in need.

Dr. Valerie Earnshaw is a social psychologist and Professor at the University of Delaware. Her research focuses on understanding and addressing associations between stigma and health inequities across the lifespan. Dr. Earnshaw aims to contribute to knowledge of how stigma contributes to health outcomes and what protects people from the negative impacts of stigma, as well as contribute to interventions that improve the well-being of stigmatized children, youth, and families. In 2025, Dr. Earnshaw was appointed the incoming editor of Stigma and Health, a journal that publishes research that informs real-world efforts to address stigma and right social injustice.

Dr. Earnshaw has been a critical research partner on the Addiction Policy Forum’s Anti-Stigma Initiative. She partnered with Addiction Policy Forum to create and publish research in the Journal of Addictive Diseases on Addiction Policy Forum’s stigma-reducing training program called enCompass. Participants reported decreased addiction stigma and improved knowledge about substance use disorders after receiving the enCompass program. Additionally, Dr. Earnshaw played a critical role in the Addiction Policy Forum’s report, “The Effect of Stigma on Naloxone Access and Policy Support.” Together, the Addiction Policy Forum, Dr. Earnshaw, and researchers from the University of Delaware designed and administered a survey to 57 partner organizations, ranging from public health departments, hospital systems, universities, recovery community organizations, and criminal justice agencies. Dr. Earnshaw and her colleagues helped to analyze the data and findings. Dr. Earnshaw emphasized the policy implications: “Our findings suggest that stigma is associated with support for addiction-related policies. Reducing stigma is essential for building broader support for harm reduction strategies like naloxone access.”

Dr. Earnshaw also serves on the Addiction Policy Forum’s scientific advisory board, a group of nationally recognized experts in medicine, psychiatry, addiction treatment, and research that provides strategic guidance and direction for the organization's scientific programs.

Dr. Earnshaw is currently leading and collaborating on multiple studies to learn more about and intervene in stigma. Examples of her current work include: a longitudinal study of how mental illness stigma develops, evolves, and impacts treatment outcomes during emerging adulthood; and the testing of a disclosure intervention called “Disclosing Recovery: A Decision Aid and Toolkit,” which helps people in treatment for opioid use disorder make key decisions surrounding disclosures (including whether, why, what, how, and when to disclose) and build skills for disclosure. Dr. Earnshaw is also collaborating with APF to develop a Patient Engagement Framework that is tailored for addiction research. 

Dr. Earnshaw earned her PhD in Social Psychology in 2011 from the University of Connecticut and then pursued post-doctoral training in HIV/AIDS at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale University. She additionally received early career training in child- and family-centered health outcomes research at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital.