Paulette Cha is a research fellow at PPIC, where her work focuses on the health of underserved populations, especially children and immigrants. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed outlets including the American Journal of Public Health and the Journal of Adolescent Health, and she has been cited in numerous media outlets such as the Sacramento Bee and the Orange County Register. Before joining PPIC, she was a joint postdoctoral fellow at UCLA and the University of Southern California, and she has past experience evaluating social policy interventions in health and education for low-income individuals. She holds a PhD in health policy/health economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Shannon McConville is a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California and a member of the PPIC Economic Policy Center. Her research interests include health care access, utilization, and outcomes among vulnerable populations and the impact of vocational training programs on economic mobility. Her current work focuses on examining safety net programs, assessing the effects of Medicaid coverage expansions on individuals involved with the criminal justice system, and analyzing the employment outcomes and economic returns of career technical education. Before joining PPIC, she was a research training fellow in the Health Services and Policy Analysis doctoral program at the University of California, Berkeley; a senior research associate at the Department of Health Research and Policy at Stanford University; and a project manager at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She holds a master’s in public policy from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Shalini Mustala is a research associate at the Public Policy Institute of California, where she focuses on the health care safety net. Before joining PPIC, she worked as a planning engineer for the government of India, working closely with rural infrastructure policies. She has a background in civil and environmental engineering and holds a master’s degree in public policy data science from the University of Southern California.