Health Equity: Revitalizing Health and Culture in Hawaiʻi (Video)

khi is home to about 50,000 people it’s
been home to most new immigrant groups
immigrating to Hawaii over the last 150
years and so there is a lot of
low-income people and uh lack of Access
to Health Care and lack of support for
their culture for us as a healthcare
organization it behooved us to
understand what was the culture of
Health in this community and for this
community the culture of health is
really about connection connection to
your community connection to the land
connection to your culture to your
language to your Traditions those were
all the things that sort of inspired us
to be where we are today as an
organization we’re really about
strengthening that abundance that
already exists here in the community but
sometimes is obscured by A Narrative of
deficit in poverty and ill health we’re
standing on 100 acres of land where we
do reforestation efforts which was a
reflection of the community saying we no
longer have a place to put our hands in
the soil and understand where we are how
do we belong to this community the
health of this community is directly
tied to the health of the land the
vibrancy of the culture and that
connection if we are not taking care of
the land if we’re not taking care of
those connections then surely not only
humans will be sick but our entire
environment and for us in the Pacific
Islands our environment is our family
we’re up here on the land right now
where people come together on a regular
basis to grow their tradition
traditional food stuffs they’re able to
come up here and harvest traditional
medicines many of my patients will get
out of the car or bus and they’ll say
I’m home that feeling of being at home
has to be Central to our sense of being
healthy could you take a deep breath for
me in our small Apothecary here on the
land we’re able to revitalize practices
that have been dormant in our
communities for a long time to make sure
that native people have access to our
own plant medicine that’s what helps our
Community to be able to move forward
with pride in our identity and
connection to a health that makes sense
for
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us we have been working in public
housing with healthc care for 50 years
we notice that when people are on the
land they are themselves so creating a
garden space within public housing was
just a sort of an obvious way for us to
create a space where people could build
community and solidarity with one
another it opportunity for our kapuna to
come in and reconnect back to their
Roots reconnect back to their home it’s
important that we have these spaces
especially today where we’re moving
further and further away from that idea
of being in the ground is good to be
able to come to this space and
appreciate the land appreciate the
people that came before
us at the heart of our organization is a
group of women we call our super anties
our super anties walked our community in
the’ 70s and built relationships with
families to try and make sure that
whatever it is that we as a network are
accountable to we are providing that the
super anes are important because they’re
the ones that are getting in the clients
they’re passing down information into
the community and so a lot of the
community we look to the super anties to
give that direction our people here in
the community are built on resilience
like anything that happens in the
community we’re not struggling
individually we’re struggling together
as a community for Hawaiian people
Equity is part of how our society our
culture is designed so Health Equity is
about revitalizing our way of connecting
to one another making sure that even the
smallest and the slowest Among Us are
cared for in all the ways that deep
potency that comes from within a
community it’s our responsibility to
help it be activated and seen within
each other and when a community is whole
like that that’s when we have hope for
our
future the story here of Hawaii there’s
a lot of pain in that story of people
being dispossessed from their land and
their culture and the last 50 years has
seen this tremendous cultural
Renaissance of the Hawaiian culture
everyone is in this struggle together
and it isn’t just a struggle it’s an
uplifting of gifts and talents that have
the chance to heal all of us and our
critical right now in a world where we
know resilient communities are going to
be increasingly important
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