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Outreach health
By Helen Altonn
project wins national
recognition
Star-BulletinA Waikiki Health Center program combining traditional Hawaiian healing with Western medicine today was recognized nationally as a model for "breaking down barriers to health-care access."
The Ho'ola Like Outreach Project (Healers Together) on Oahu's North Shore provides health care to uninsured and underinsured residents.
The U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration selected the project as one of seven "2000 Models That Work" in tackling challenges of providing health care to low-income people, reducing the stigma of mental-health care and encouraging school health checkups.
Other winners were from Kansas, New York, South Carolina and Illinois.
The Rev. Frank Chong, executive director of the Waikiki Health Center, was in Washington, D.C., today with a Ho'ola Like contingent to receive the honor in a ceremony in the National Press Building.
Others were Dale Allison, nurse practitioner who coordinates the program, outreach worker Marilyn Kealoha and Francine Dudoit, a Hawaiian healer.
Lisa Dunn, Waikiki Health Center program director, said the Ho'ola Like staff will be asked to help other areas replicate what they've accomplished on the North Shore.
The "Models That Work" campaign is aimed at helping other communities meet health-care needs of America's neediest people.
The Ho'ola Like project has been so successful that the Waikiki Health Center has opened three other outreach projects in Palolo Valley, Dunn said.
"We have all the stuff in suitcases on wheels," she said. "Outreach workers wheel it in, do the clinic, pack it up and wheel it out."
The North Shore project was recognized for quadrupling immunizations, doubling physical examinations and increasing control of hypertension and diabetes. Emergency-room visits, hospital stays and school absences were reduced.
Hawaii Pacific University is a partner in the program, with faculty and students in the Nursing Division providing services from three portable clinics.
They are located in the Queen Liliuokalani Church in Haleiwa, the Queen Liliuokalani Children's Center in Punaluu and in the KEY Project in Kahaluu, Dunn said.
The Palolo clinics are in the Honolulu Action Program offices on the grounds of Jarrett Intermediate School, in the administration building at Palolo Valley Housing and at Anuenue School.
Patients have made about 1,800 visits to nurses at the North Shore clinics since since July 1998.
Services range from well-baby and school physicals and immunizations to acute and chronic care.
Outreach workers provide referrals and help clients apply for medical insurance.
Hawaiian healers and their students practice lomilomi (Hawaiian massage), la'au lapa'au (Hawaiian herbal medicines) and ho'oponopono (conflict resolution).
"Nobody has to go in and see a nurse practitioner or doctor and pretend they're not using complementary medicine as well," Dunn said. "It's right out there. Healers are working with the doctors."
