Insights in Public Health:

There are substantial and persistent health disparities among Native Hawaiians that are best addressed through multilevel socio-ecological approaches, which are tailored to the needs of the community. Partnerships that link academic investigators with grass roots community members have the potential to profoundly reduce health disparities and improve health and wellness by increasing the capacity of community-based organizations to provide leadership in health advocacy, support community health promotion, and participate in health research. We describe a 14-year partnership to reduce Native Hawaiian health disparities between investigators from The Queen's Medical Center and University of Hawai'i John A. Burns School of Medicine (QMC-JABSOM) and community members in Hana, a geographically isolated, underserved, rural community with the second largest concentration of Native Hawaiians in the state. Our relationship started as an investigator-initiated, National Institutes of Health-sponsored study to explore familial cardiomyopathy, and transitioned to a community-based project that combined community cardiovascular health screening fairs with a qualitative research study to understand attitudes towards genetic research. Most recently, QMC-JABSOM has partnered closely with Ma Ka Hana Ka 'Ike, an award-winning construction skills training program for at-risk youth in Hana, to develop innovative, culturally based interventions to improve health and well-being among Native Hawaiians using principles of community-based participatory research.