Exploring Marriages and Families

Karen Seccombe is a proud community college graduate (Go Citrus!) and a first-generation college student. She is now a professor in the School of Public Health at Portland State University, located in Portland, Oregon. She received her B.A. in sociology at California State University, Chico; her M.S.W. in health and social welfare policy from the University of Washington; and her Ph.D. in sociology from Washington State University. Karen is the author of Social Problems, with W. Kornblum and J. Julian (Pearson); "So You Think I Drive a Cadillac?": Welfare Recipients' Perspectives on the System and Its Reform (Pearson); Families and Their Social Worlds (Pearson); Just Don't Get Sick: Access to Healthcare in the Aftermath of Welfare Reform, with K. A. Hoffman (Rutgers University Press); and Families in Poverty (Pearson). She is a fellow of the National Council on Family Relations, and a member of the American Sociological Association and the Pacific Sociological Association, where she has held elective offices.

Karen lives in the San Juan Islands, located off the northwest coast of Washington with her husband Richard, a health economist, her sixteen-year-old daughter, Natalie Rose, her fourteen-year-old daughter, Olivia Lin, and her two Australian Shepherds, Stella and Bart. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, biking, international travel, and hanging out with her pack. In spring 2017, she taught in the Semester at Sea program, and, along with 550 college students, traveled to Japan, China, Vietnam, Myanmar, India, Mauritius, South Africa, Ghana, and Morocco.