Celebrates the high-quality care that health centers provide across the nation. Share Our Selves Community Health Centers provide access to primary health care services for Orange County residents. In celebration of National Health Center Week, we are proud to showcase our patient-centered approach accessible to everyone at a low cost.
Each day of NHCW focuses on an area of comprehensive care coordinated in our network of community health centers.
Share Our Selves is designated as healthcare for the homeless provider. Our mobile health unit services the community twice a week, traveling to shelters around the county. Our partnership with Mercy House allows us to care for our venerable patients with access to our medical services onsite. Click here to learn more about Mercy House.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the passage of the Migrant Health Act, the landmark agreement that sowed the seeds for what would later become the Community Health Center Program. At our very origin, Share Our Selves was founded to care for those in need. And at the time of our inception, some of those most in need were local migrant farm workers.
Our patients are the heart of our mission. Share Our Selves Community Health Centers were recognized by the National Committee of Quality Assurance’s (NCQA) Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) program for providing services that put the patient at the forefront of care. Annually our providers care for an average of 16,000 patients.
Our community stakeholders champion Share Our Selves by actively supporting our work through various channels. We appreciate the commitment of our volunteers, donors, community partners, board members, and elected officials at the city, local and national levels.
Share Our Selves staff are unequivocal devoted to caring for our clients and patients. We want to celebrate their dedication with our staff celebrations across the organization.
Since its inception in 1995, our Back to School Program has provided backpacks filled with school supplies to local students through the support of our generous donor community.
COSTA MESA, CA, – More than 280 people cruised over to the OC Fair & Event Center on Saturday, April 24th to take part in the first drive-through style event in the 28 year history of Share Our Selves (SOS) Wild & Crazy Taco Night.
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Save the Date Thursday, November 17, 2022
For more information, contact Stephanie Harrington at sharrington@shareourselves.org.
We would like to thank our generous event partners for their contributions over the last several years. We encourage you to support our local community by visiting one of them this fall.
For more information on our special events, please contact sosfoundation@shareourselves.org
As we celebrate Pride this month, we here at SOS wanted to take this opportunity to consider the issues and barriers facing our LGBTQ community in Orange County, and what we are doing as an organization to address them. It is our mission to provide care and assistance to those in need and act as advocates for systemic change, and we work every day to fulfill that mission for our LQBTQ community in a supportive and welcoming environment, sensitive to the struggles they face daily.
A recent study by the Center for American Progress found that 1 in 3 LGBTQ Americans, including 3 in 5 transgender Americans, experienced discrimination in just the past year. The study found that “many LGBTQ people continue to face discrimination in their personal lives, in the workplace and the public sphere, and in their access to critical health care. This experience of discrimination leads to many adverse consequences for their financial, mental, and physical well-being.”
SOS has a wide range of services available to directly attend to these issues including medical and dental care, behavioral health services, financial assistance, and homeless services. However, we know that simply having these services available is not enough. Addressing the needs of the LGBTQ community requires a team that is compassionate and well informed on the unique challenges of these individuals, and that is what we have at SOS. Our health providers are trained to care for the health conditions facing our LGBTQ patients in a sensitive and gender-affirming way. The fear of discrimination can also lead people to avoid seeking care, but at SOS everyone who walks through our doors is treated with dignity and respect, and without judgment.
The LGBTQ homeless population is particularly vulnerable, and our team of experts, as well as our community of volunteers, provides a safe space to talk, and work to find solutions so that we can help improve their living situation. Often this includes behavioral or substance abuse services, medical services for transgender individuals looking to affirm their gender, and working with other organizations to find permanent, supportive housing.
In addition to the direct services we provide every day, our leadership team also works with other community groups and organizations to advance the cause of equity in Orange County so that protections for vulnerable groups like the LGBTQ community can be enacted to promote systemic change. We also support legislation including the Equality Act that would codify those protections into law.
We have a long way to go in our society in the treatment of our LQBTQ community, but we are working every day towards the goal of equality for all. This month is a great time to recognize the progress that has been made and celebrate the freedom to choose love for everyone in our community.
On the Anniversary of George Floyd’s Death
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin
Yesterday marked a year since the murder of George Floyd under the knees of police brutality.
His death brought on a reckoning and imperative to practice critical and crucial conversations on the historical and continued racist harm experienced by the black community and an intense examination of our current systems, norms, and bias that perpetuate racism and inequities.
As part of a national collective of community health centers, our mission is our community. At Share Our Selves we are committed to equality, systemic change, compassionate and empathetic leadership. Through these principles we will continue to work against inequality, systemic injustices, racism, and abuse of power.
We leave our imagination of a world without racism into living what that anti-racist world would be like. It begins with you, me, all of us. We must because of George Floyd and many others before and after him. Black Live Matter. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.
Sincerely,
Christy Ward
Chief Executive Officer
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