Mary Anne Foo, MPH ‘93

Mary Anne Foo is the Executive Director and Founder of the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance (OCAPICA), established in 1997. OCAPICA is the largest Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander nonprofit organization in Orange County, reaching over 80,000 individuals annually. The organization provides services across health, education, housing, workforce development, and civic engagement, with a diverse staff of more than 120 speaking over 20 languages. A fourth-generation Chinese/Japanese Californian, Foo’s personal experiences with racism and her parents’ civil rights activism shaped her commitment to social justice and health equity.

With nearly 40 years of experience advancing health equity and social justice, Foo has worked extensively at the national, state, and local levels. She has served on numerous boards and advisory councils, including those for major healthcare systems, philanthropic foundations, and municipal agencies. As a principal investigator, she has led community-based health equity research and has published widely in peer-reviewed journals. Her current areas of focus include chronic disease prevention, behavioral health, anti-hate initiatives, cultural resilience, and community power building.

Foo received her MPH from UCLA Fielding school of Public Health in 1993 and formed a life-long partnership in community based participatory research with several UCLA colleagues, professors, and peers addressing disparities in health, publishing first of its kind data, and developing interventions and influencing policies and systems with underserved populations.  Their work has produced innovative studies on health disparities, improved data disaggregation, expanded language access, and informed systems and policy changes benefiting underserved populations.