Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 12, Number 3, 1 Malaki 1995 — Department of Health shuts down Office of Hawaiian Health [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Department of Health shuts down Office of Hawaiian Health

Faced with drastic budget cuts, the state Department of Health (DOH) has chosen to shut down a number

of its smaller offices, including the Office of Hawaiian Healīh (OHH). OHH was created during former DOH director Dr. Jack Lewin's administration as a response to the serious heahh problems among Hawaiians, and the fact that health programs designed to address such problems were not effectively reaching the community. The Office of Hawaiian Health was to work with other divisions of the DOH to correct these problems.

The jury is still out on what exactly went wrong — sources both in and outside the department point to a laek of staff and financial support - but OHH had difficulty carrying out its charge and was viewed as ineffective. "The office has been around for five years," says Dr. Lawrence Miike, incoming DOH director, "with little or no impaeī." The first executive director of Papa Ola Lōkahi (POL) and now a member of its board of directors, Miike feels the POL board - whieh includes a representative from eaeh island heahh center, OHA, the University of Hawai'i, and Alu Like

- is a forum where health leaders ean discuss and provide direction for Hawaiian health policies and that the Office of Hawaiian Health represents a costly and ineffectual duplication of services. Miike wants to see all the divisions and branches of the health department infused with the OHH directive and it will now be the responsibility of individual divisions to perform OHH functions. The heakh director says he will institute policies to make sure the department begins to identify Hawaiians in state health programs and monitor the level of Hawaiian participation.

OHA heakh and human services director Lorraine Godoy believes Miike's presence should make up for the laek of a formal Hawaiian heakh advocate within the department. "He has indicated," she says, "that he will be working with Hawaiian groups to institutionalize a process to assure Hawaiians equal access to services from the Department of Heakh." Legislation introduced this month would have re-established the office and placed it in the director's office, a position that would have given it added clout. The bill however, was held in committee.