Born: 1982 (circa), United States
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is republished from the Badass Womxn and Enbies in the Pacific Northwest Volume 3, in line with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. It was written by Nya Maddox (they/them).
Erin Waters is a healthcare educator and activist with a focus on the Black and Indigenous Queer community. Her work has taken many forms, going anywhere from the development of affirming care programs to speaking at the 2018 Portland Trans Pride March, 2019 Trans Day of Visibility in Portland, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) conferences. Through her many years of work, Waters has created endless opportunities for transgender and gender non-conforming people to access healthcare in the Pacific Northwest.
Originally raised in the deep south, Waters moved to Portland in 2011 and found herself working with Outside In, an agency which aids trans and queer homeless youth in their journey through shelters and towards gender affirming care. Following Outside In, Waters began working with the Northwest Gender Pathways Clinic within Kaiser Permanente as a community health navigator. In this position, she was able to work with members of her own community and aid them in finding workplaces that they could feel comfortable and safe within. She has been able to draw from her own experiences accessing healthcare as a Black trans woman for her work and has witnessed the monumental impacts that the coverage of gender affirming care can have. Waters’ knowledge of community resources paired with her public facing role allows her to greatly increase the access to community resources in her area and align the residents with resources tailored to their situation. Waters was instrumental in the 2018 push for Kaiser Permanente to change their policies to include coverage for breast augmentation surgeries for trans women, which is in line with her-philosophy of advocating for those who are unable to advocate for themselves.
She has won several awards for her work in not only activism, but education as well. Her accolades include the David J. Lawrence Community Service Award from Kaiser Permanente in 2020 and the Kathleen Saadat Community Advocate Award from Multnomah County in 2022, showing that her impact on the local community has been many years in the making. She has also been acknowledged as a Queer Hero by the Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest in 2019. Her work of educating the public leaves her as a pillar of the trans community, and the infallible energy and optimism she possesses is apparent when she discusses her story or talks about healthcare for her community. The work Erin Waters does often falls behind the scenes, but she is an instrumental piece of the movement and deserves recognition for her impact on the lives of those around her.