Doris A. Howell Foundation
The Howell Foundation serves to make a lasting impact on the overall wellbeing of women by “Keeping the Women We Love Healthy.” The Foundation focuses on three key areas: Research Scholarships, Educational Events and Community Engagement. The Howell Foundation is dedicated to making a long-term, positive impact on women’s health throughout all of San Diego County. Nursing Scholarships have been awarded to all of the major universities in San Diego. There is a severe shortage of qualified nurses throughout the United States and San Diego is no different. Furthermore, there is also a shortage of nurses who hold a Ph.D. and fill important leadership positions as well as taking on teaching responsibilities. Many of the graduate nurses the Howell Foundation supported in the past have remained in San Diego, each of them improving health care in their chosen position. Funding from the National CHEERS Foundation supports graduate nursing students in their women’s health research. Each scholarship awarded expands the understanding of women’s health and prepares another potential researcher for a career in women’s health research.
Family Health Centers of San Diego
Founded in 1970, FHCSD is San Diego County’s largest nonprofit community health center, fulfilling a vital community need for high-quality, affordable medical, mental health, dental, and women’s health care. The 2020 CHEERS grant funds medical equipment they need to provide onsite second stage cervical cancer screenings for low-income, medically underserved, and uninsured/underinsured women in East County. The CHEERS grant funds a critically needed colposcope, which is a flexible, free-standing binocular microscope that allows a clinician to thoroughly examine the cervix to look for signs of cancer or precancerous abnormalities. For many women, the time, travel, expense, and prospect of undergoing a pelvic examination with an unfamiliar medical care provider discourages them from following through with the procedure. By providing colposcopies for women in their own community, transportation and access barriers are greatly reduced, and women at risk for cervical cancer can receive secondary screening and treatment in their medical home, with doctors and staff they know and trust.
Center for Community Solutions
The National CHEERS Foundation is thrilled to provide support to the four CCS shelters — two short term emergency shelters and two long-term recovery shelters that house survivors and their children for up to 18 months as they work to rebuild self-sufficiency and recover from trauma. All shelters operate with the goal to holistically serve each survivor, offering not only basic needs like food and clothing, but also access to CCS trauma services such as counseling, child abuse therapy, and legal help. Survivors are provided with a warm, welcoming environment that is conducive to healing. CHEERS funded a grant for new mattresses and mattress protectors to be distributed where they are needed most across the four shelters.
The Comfort Club
Comfort Club has become a vital part of San Diego hospital’s bereavenment program. The size and weight of the Comfort Clubs are designed to mimic the feeling of getting a hug! The physiological effects of releasing the “happy hormones” help those who have lost a baby or child manage their grief, Grieving mothers experience perinatal bereavement symptoms including depression, aching arms and stress-induced cardiomyopathy dubber the “broken heart syndrome”
