The University of Hawaii has received an anonymous $4.6 million gift for an initiative that supports Indigenous innovation as a tool for health equity in Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations.
The gift will go toward the UH Center for Indigenous Innovation and Health Equity, the university said in a statement last week.
The center was established in 2021 with a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health. The university said the gift will “fund the center’s first endowed chair and provide funding for programs and activities to advance their work.”
“This gift validates and affirms our work to restore and improve the health of our Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities,” stated Kamuela Enos, director of the UH System Office of Indigenous Innovation and the project’s principal investigator. “We are deeply grateful for the support and recognition for our program and the incredible potential it has to lift up our Indigenous communities.”
In the statement, Aimee Malia Grace, director of the UH System Office for Strategic Health Initiatives and co-lead of the initiative, noted that the center so far has worked to build its team, develop an Indigenous framework in collaboration with community partners, and identify Indigenous innovations that have the potential for positive health outcomes. Now, officials said, the center plans to turn its focus to these three pillars: research initiatives, policy strategies and economic development initiatives.
In addition to Enos and Grace, other members of the center’s leadership team include Alika Maunakea, associate professor leading Indigenous-informed biomedical research underlying health disparities at the UH Manoa John A. Burns School of Medicine, and Marjorie Leimomi Mau, director and principal investigator at the JABSOM Center for Native and Pacific Health Disparities Research. Partner organizations include Hauoli Mau Loa Foundation, MAO Farms, Hooulu Aina (Kokua Kalihi Valley), the Edith Kanakaʻole Foundation and Chaminade University.
“The University of Hawaii is extremely grateful for this generous gift that will help to ‘move the needle’ on existing and future efforts by our Center for Indigenous Innovation and Health Equity,” said UH Vice President for Research and Innovation Vassilis L. Syrmos. “Helping to improve the health and way of life for our residents, especially those in the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities, is one of the key focal points in our research and innovation efforts at UH.”
