Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 38, Number 12, 1 December 2021 — Meals & Mahalo Nui to the Heroes of the Pandemic [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Meals & Mahalo Nui to the Heroes of the Pandemic

J LEO 'ELELE V ^ TRUSTEE MESSAGES *

Last month, I was honored to represent the Office of Hawaiian Affairs at a Meals & Mahalo event held at the Queens Medical Center West O'ahu. Meals & Mahalo is the result of a partnership between OHA and Lunalilo Home that provides healthy Hawaiian lunches to heahh care providers as a small token of gratitude for their work in battling COVID-19. Meals & Mahalo has also distributed

meals at several other hospitals including Hilo Medical Center, Queen's North Hawai'i Community Hospital, Straub Medical Center, and Kaiser Permanente Moanalua Medical Center. Sadly, Native Hawaiians make up a heartbreaking number of those who have gotten sick, hospitalized, or in the worst of scenarios, lost their lives due to the coronavirus. Zip codes with a high concentration of Native Hawaiian residents heeame "hot zones" - a deadly combination of low vaccination rates and high positive case counts. For this reason, it was important for me, and for OHA, to extend our deep gratitude to the doctors, nurses, and various heakh support staff for their tireless work on behalf of our people and our beneficiaries.

My gratitude for the doctors and nurses also reminded me of others such as those individuals working in the puhlie heakh and legislative arenas, who took on the work of promoting vaccination, educating the puhlie and implementing safety measures to keep people as safe as possible. They deserve mueh credit as well, because their efforts have resulted in a robust vaccination rate, with the Centers for Disease Control reporting in October 2021 that 90% of the state's eligible popu-

lation had taken at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot. But it should be noted that Hawai'i's high rate of vaccination was achieved without a universal mandate. This shows that voluntary incentives and puhlie heakh information eampaigns are extremely effective at encouraging vaccination, without taking away individual ehoiee. In my October 2021 Ka Wai Ola eolumn, entitled "Coronavirus Management Should Respect Individual Choice," I expressed

my gratitude for government efforts to encourage, educate, and incentivize a majority of our island population to voluntarily get vaccinated. Although voluntariness was and still is the key, I emphasized that one's freedom to make personal heakh choices should not eome at the cost of potential harm to others. We must all act responsibly. I do not know that we ean ever repay the great debt we owe to the heakh care providers and puhlie heakh professionals who have ushered us through this unprecedented time. But I am thankful that Meals & Mahalo provided me with an opportunity to express my gratitude, and to meet some real-life heroes. ■ Trustee Akina welcomes your feedback at TrusteeAkina@oha.org.

Keli'i Akina, Ph.D. Trustee, At-large

Trustee Akina with Tammy Smith of Lunalilo Home, Dr. Gerard Akaka, vice president of Native Hawaiian Affairs and Clinicol Support for Queen's Health Systems, and administrative staff of Queen's Medieal Center West O'ahu.. - Photo: Courtesy