Join us to celebrate what we have accomplished this year and to welcome the new and returning members joining our 2022-2023 Board of Directors!

Also, join us to applaud the 2022 Thurmond Scholarship Recipients who are successfully achieving their academic and career goals despite financial hardships and personal challenges. Click here to see more.

Help the YWCA-OC support programs that serve women and families throughout Orange County during this challenging time. 

We would love to see you at our in person Celebration on Saturday, July 30th at 10:00AM. Location to be announced by the 6th.
​

Event Speaker: Shana Alex Charles, MPP, PhD

   Shana Alex Charles, MPP, PhD, received her Master's degree in Public Policy (Health and Regional Development) from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs in 2001 and her PhD in Health Services (Health Policy) from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health in 2009.​ She joined the CSUF faculty in 2015 after six years as Director of Health Insurance Studies at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, where she continues as a Faculty Associate.
  Dr. Charles's research focuses on discontinuous health insurance and its impact on access to care, racial and ethnic disparities in health coverage and access to care, as well as underinsurance among those with coverage. She also specializes in political issues surrounding health care reform at both the state and the national levels.
   Since 2001, Dr. Charles has directed the biennial State of Health Insurance in California report. She also serves as a Cost Lead with the California Health Benefits Review Program, analyzing health insurance benefit mandates currently proposed in the California Legislature. Her most recent works include articles on the impact of health insurance benefit mandates on racial and ethnic disparities and examining disparities in delaying and forgoing needed health care, a study of the effects of COVID-19 on insurance and access to care among college students in the CSU system, and she is currently writing a book on the intersections of COVID-19 and American Federalism.
​   Dr. Charles served as the Chair of the Community Development Citizen's Committee for the City of Fullerton until December 2020 and was proud to play a role in dispersing CARES Act funding to residents in need of help because of the pandemic in 2020.