Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 28, Number 10, 1 October 2011 — Native Hawaiian Health Fact Sheet 2011 [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Native Hawaiian Health Fact Sheet 2011

The Office of Hawaiians Affairs was established to help provide the opportunity for a better life and future for all Native Hawaiians. In 2010, OHA was reorganized with a specific role focused on research and results to guide

its efforts and actions. This new era of OHA has a particularly strategic strand focused on iniproving Native Hawaiian heahh for its beneficiaries. Part of this heahh effort has determined a strong need for leadership capacity to address Native Hawaiian heahh issues between and whhin the social layers of inlluenee. Through institutional partnership, the Native Hawaiian Heahh Consortium was formed to increase

organizational coordination, collaboration, and comprehensiveness to seek support from federal agencies on Native Hawaiian heahh issues for the eonunon heahh interests of these partners and their networks. 0VERVIEW 0F NATIVE HAWAIIAN HEALĪH Research shows that in present day there is a Native Hawaiian puhlie heahh crisis when analyzing chronic disease indicators, specifically cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, asthma, and cancer. We report these statistics in order to shed light on this issue and applieahle contextualized detenninants of heahh status rates. ĪHE HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL LINKS T0 NATIVE HAWAIIAN HEALĪH 0F THE PAST To fully comprehend the state of the contemporary heahh status of Native Hawaiians, h is essential to explicate the foundations of traditional Hawaiian heahh practices that lead to a thriving society of physically adept people. Critical to the well-being and vigor of Native Hawaiians was a highly structured system of ancient medical art forms of preventive heahh, acute care, and holistic healing. From 1776 to 1893, a 90% depopulation of the Native Hawaiian community took plaee due to severe biological, psychological, and physical displacements Native Hawaiians faced whhin their own homes (Blaisdell, 1998) (see Figure 1). Thus, to contextualize the plight of Hawai'i's indigenous people, h is unportant to acknowledge the structure of ancient Hawaiian healing and the state of wellness prior to foreign contact. NATIVE HAWAIIAN POPULAĪION The Native Hawaiian population makes up approximately 22% (305,838) of the State of Hawai'i total population (see Figure 2). This number has been slightly increasing over the past 10 years (DOH, 2008). In the Census 2000, 161,507 Native Hawaiians lived in the Continental U.S. (2001). Today, over 40% of the Native Hawaiian population resides off the Hawaiian Islands.

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