Charlene Day
Dr. Charlene Day, Executive Director and founder of Education for Quality Living, a woman-owned health promotion and disease prevention professional services firm dedicated to providing individuals from, and organizations serving, disenfranchised communities with information and education to make informed health and wellbeing decisions.
Dr. Day spent years on Capitol Hill as a senior legislative aide offering advise on health and other wellbeing related issues to a former member of Congress (William H. Gray, III - deceased). It was because of her experiences with constituents on the hill that she decided to devote her career to reducing the large gaps in basic health information among many people of color and designing disease prevention programs that create healthy outcomes for those who are uninsured, underinsured and never insured in our country.
In the years following, she worked with the US Conference of Mayors to advance health initiatives important to Mayors and while there provided technical assistance to national and regional minority organizations seeking to understand and educate others about HIV/AIDS. She went on to become principal investigator, project head and lead researcher for numerous HIV/AIDS and substance abuse prevention efforts with federal funding at the national and non-profit organization level.
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Always seeking entrepreneurial opportunities, Dr. Day has founded both nonprofit and for profit organizations including the first African American woman owned evaluation firm in the country Health Evaluation Research Services (HERS) and, after moving to Las Vegas Nevada in 2001, retaking the helm as Founder and Executive Director of Education for Quality Living (EQL) - a health promotion, disease prevention and evaluation consulting firm providing services locally and nationally. During the COVID pandemic, she became the Chair of Community Partners for Better Health - a nonprofit coalition of health serving agencies in Las Vegas Nevada – leading the group and thousands of community members as a trusted face of public health in the Las Vegas community.
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Dr. Day is passionate about exploring and sharing the link between personal health and personal finances and believes strongly that true wealth is wellness optimized in all areas of one’s life. Moreover, she believes that if your financial house is not in order, your personal health house may suffer, often reciting her mantra – your health is wealth; the two are intertwined, if you neglect one, it will inevitably reflect the other. She is a co-founder of Savvy Sisters, and co-author of the Grandma Deer financial literacy series of young reader books.
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Dr. Day has an exemplary track record in the development, implementation and evaluation of over 200 health promotion and disease prevention programs, projects and initiatives receiving federal state foundation and local funding. A few programs that might be recognizable to her followers include, but are not limited to: Las Vegas Reality Tour - a fun and educational dramatization for families to appreciate substance misuse and learn strategies for prevention; Care For The Girls- a breast cancer prevention program for uninsured and underinsured women for which she sought and secured American Cancer Society funding through Community Partners for Better Health; Healthy Outcomes in Pregnancy - decrease infant mortality among people of color for which she and a team of EQL Experts designed and evaluated the initiative.
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Always collaborating and partnering with other entities to maximize program outreach and education exposure, Dr. Day has worked with Las Vegas based Community Partners for Better health to bring health promotion programs to faith communities, including: Las Vegas Reality Tour - a fun and educational dramatization for families to appreciate substance misuse and learn strategies for prevention; Care For The Girls - a breast cancer prevention program for uninsured and underinsured women for which she sought and secured American Cancer Society funding through Community Partners for Better Health; Healthy Outcomes in Pregnancy - decrease infant mortality among people of color for which she and a team of EQL Experts designed and evaluated the initiative.
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She was the co-developer and trainer training coordinator for the federally funded initiative from the US Office of Adolescent Health to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Center for Health Disparities for a grant entitled The Southern Nevada Teen Pregnancy Prevention Project - designed to reduce teen pregnancy and provide sexual health education to use ages 14 to 19 in faith based institutions.
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For over 20 years she has successfully Coached the famed evidence-based wellness program Body&Soul having been hired by a team of researchers at the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute to assume the role of national “Coach” for institute's Body and Soul project. As a result of the faith of the NIH staff in her expertise, she was able to teach teams at over 100 churches, colleges and universities how to properly implement the successful evidence based cancer prevention intervention.
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Her doctorate degree in Public Health was completed at the University of Maryland, College Park, her Masters in Public Administration from the University of Oklahoma and her double major undergraduate degree in Drama and Political Science from Marymount College in Tarrytown New York. She has been appointed and served as a faculty member/staff to several colleges and universities around the country including: the University of Nevada Las Vegas, the University of Nevada-Reno Cooperative Extension and the University of Maryland, College Park.
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Dr. Day is living her Third Act in a bi-coastal manner, both in Las Vegas and in the Washington DC area and shares the wonders of life and living with her husband, Rodney Hollifield, MD, two daughters (Lauren and Carmen) a son-in-law Damien Medrano and her double-doddle dog Bella.