Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 28, Number 3, 1 March 2011 — NATIVE HAWAIIAN » NEWS | FEATURES | EVENTS MAULI OLA HEALTH ALIVING TREASURE BY TREENA SHAPIRO OF PHOTOS BY JOHN DE MELLO HAWAIʻI [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

NATIVE HAWAIIAN » NEWS | FEATURES | EVENTS MAULI OLA HEALTH ALIVING TREASURE BY TREENA SHAPIRO OF PHOTOS BY JOHN DE MELLO HAWAIʻI

When Dr. Claire Ku'uleilani Hughes told her mother she wanted to be a dietitian, she had no idea she was making a decision that would lead to groundbreaking work in Native Hawaiian heahh care initiatives. She says, in fact, that her career path has been so serendipitous that she wasn't concerned about the state of Hawaiian heahh until she began studying puhlie heahh nutrition in graduate school. Since becoming the first Native Hawaiian registered dietitian in 1959, however, Hughes has identified puhlie heahh needs for Native Hawaiians and worked with quiet determination to secure federal funding for culturally based heahh and nutrition programs. Her work within the State Department of Heahh, throughout the community and on the national level, has led to extensive heahh screenings at Hawaiian Civic Club meetings and drawn attention to the benefits of returning to a more traditional diet. Although risk factors related to excessive weight are not specific to Native Hawaiians, Hughes still sees a need to make prevention efforts relevant whhin a community still trying to rebuild its cultural awareness and identity. Beyond just telling Hawaiians what they need to do to improve their heahh, Hughes wants to make them believe they deserve the same quality of life as anyone else. "You can't go on a diet if you can't feel you're worth of being better," she says. Hughes, whose career at the State Heahh Department spanned more than three decades, first heeame aware of Hawaiian heahh needs while working on a master's degree in the University of Hawai'i School of Puhlie Heahh. "It was obvious immediately that Hawaiians were in trouble because they were the examples used in all my courses," she says. Despite the known disparities, nothing was being done to specifically address Native Hawaiian heahh, Hughes discovered. Since nutrition is a cross-cutting issue, she thought raising awareness could lower the incidence of hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol and other problems associated with severe weight issues. Without funding, however, her ideas for educational outreach had to be tabled. I"For the longest time there was no opportunity to do anything," she says. When she saw a ehanee in the 1980s - after about 12 years as a puhlie heahh nutritionist - Hughes seized it and has been committed to finding ways to address heahh concerns ever since. "If you look at her work in diet and nutrition, she has done so mueh outside her field," says Dr. Benjamin Young, a driving force behind Hughes' recent recognition as a 2011 Living Treasure by Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawai'i. During her 30 years with the ^ Heahh Department, Hughes held various positions, including Nutrition Branch Chief, but Young points to all her accomplishments beyond her professional work. "She really was at the forefront of so many programs to improve puhlie heahh," he says. During her 25 years as the State Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs Heahh Committee Chairwoman, Hughes led efforts to provide education, screening and other programs to address the heahh needs of Hawaiians. She been involved in several other organizations, including the American Cancer Society. In addition, Dr. Young adds, "She's written a eolumn that links heahh issues to Native Hawaiian mythology and culture, making the issues relevant to those she's trying to reach." Her eolumn appears in Ka Wai Ola. (See page 13.) SEE HUGHES ON PAGE 24

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HUGHES

Continued from page 19 Young met Hughes when she was his sister's classmate at Kamehameha Schools. Over the past 15 or 20 years, he has heeome well acquainted with her professionally and developed an admiration for her ability to get things done, regardless of anything standing in her way. A turning point eame when Hughes joined with other Native Hawaiians, such as Dr. Kekuni Blaisdell and Dr. Emmett Aluli, to address the concems about the health needs of Hawaiians. "She was very upset that people were trying to tell Hawaiians what should be done to improve her health," Young said. According to Hughes, a meeting called by Alu Like to focus on Hawaiian heahh helped her see that Hawaiians needed to get involved if their needs were going to be met. She and Blaisdell were the only Native Hawaiians invited to participate, and most of the others in attendance were researchers from UH. She was shocked to hear some researchers say they already knew enough about Hawaiian heahh. "It was an interesting disclosure on why things never progressed," Hughes recalls. For the next few months, she sacrificed nights, weekends and vacation time and worked with a heahh professional to glean information from charts at rural clinics and visited with Hawaiians in different communities to ask them about their heahh concerns. Soon after contributing a chapter on Hawaiians' nutrition and dental needs to

a comprehensive study, Hughes was selected to be part of a panel called to testify in Washington, D.C., before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, then chaired by U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye. Although she was nervous, Hughes wore her holokū with pride and returned critical looks with an icy stare. "It was initiation by fire," she says. "You just do h." The panel's efforts were rewarded by passage of Native Hawaiian Heahh Care Act of 1988, whieh has been a key source of funding for heahh education, heahh promotion and disease prevention for more than two decades. By that time, Hughes, Aluli and Blaisdell had already created the Moloka'i Diet, seeing "miraculous" improvements in the blood work of the participants. The four-week study called for the subjects to maintain the same weight while eating only foods that were part of the traditional

Hawaiian diet, such as taro, sweet potato and hanana. "When they went back to their regular diet, the good things went away," she says. Hughes also worked on diets in other communities, including the Wai'anae Diet Program popularized by Dr. Terry Shintani. "Claire's pride in being Hawaiian and perpetuation of Hawaiian practice steels her drive to improve health conditions for Hawaiians," said OHA Trustee Haunani Apoliona. "Her sense of social justice, cultural and health justice is evident in her health research and writings and her dedication to that mission has been respectfully recognized by Honpa Hongwanji as a Living Treasure." Apoliona, whose mom is first cousins with Hughes' father, adds: "Our 'ohana is proud of her recognihon. Many have and will eonhnue to benefit from Claire's work." Since 1989, the federal funding Hughes has worked to secure has paid for heahh screening and education for thousands of people at Hawaiian Civic Club meetings, some of whom were saved from medical crises that otherwise might have gone undetected. These screenings and other services provided by the Native Hawaiian Heahh Care Systems meet another community need: "They want to see people who look like them in the clinics, who understood them," Hughes said. "They don't get the arrogant looks that greet us when we are limited in number." ■ Treena Shapiro, a freelance writer, is aformer reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin anel Honolulu Advertiser.

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