Passionate about meeting our community’s healthcare needs, Dr. Melanie Andrews is the physician site lead at UnityPoint Health’s Family Medical Center in Peoria and a clinical assistant professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria (UICOMP). She is committed to serving both individual patients and the community as a whole, considering the larger significance of access and affordability of care, as well as conscious and unconscious bias in medicine.
Dr. Andrews chairs the Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Council at UnityPoint Health. At UICOMP, she serves on the Executive Committee of the Department of Family and Community Medicine, the Chair’s Advisory Committee, and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force. She also co-chairs the Education/Work Environment Subcommittee of UICOMP’s Anti-Racism Urgent Action Committee.
At the height of the synthetic cannabinoid crisis, Dr. Andrews worked to educate other physicians on best practices in caring for victims. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she helped develop and implement the outpatient tracking of impacted patients. She recently started the Med Ed Alliance group on Facebook, connecting members in the fields of medicine and education to provide support and share information as schools returned to in-person learning in the age of COVID.
As an integral member of the City of Peoria’s Fair Employment Commission, the traveling team for Connect Capital in Peoria, and the Building Healthy Communities partnership, Dr. Andrews works to encourage mindful city development and improve the social determinants of health and equity for everyone. For her hard work and leadership, she received UICOMP’s community service award in 2019; was named among Peoria’s 25 Women in Leadership in 2018; and was selected by UICOMP residents as Faculty Teacher of the Year in 2017. She has also received the Physician Breastfeeding Support Award from the Central Illinois Breastfeeding Task Force. PM
