HONOLULU (KHON2) — Healthcare in Hawaiʻi. It is an issue that continues to plague us. From not enough nurses to high rates of chronic illnesses, we need a system that is going to take care of us rather than make a profit off of us.
University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo faculty member shares insights on health disparities in Hawaiʻi on a new Food and Drug Administration podcast.
Despite Hawai`i residents having the highest life expectancy in the country, kānaka maoli life expectancy is over a decade shorter than that of resident counterparts of Asian ancestry.
“For Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, there has been a long history of invisibility,” explained Dr. Taira. “They’ve often been grouped with Asian Americans or in another race category so when you look at clinical trials that have been conducted, it’s almost impossible to get data on those two specific ethnic groups. And yet, in the case of diabetes, the prevalence of the disease among those two groups is very high.”
This disparity is amongst the topics discussed by Dr. Deborah Taira, a professor at the UH Hilo Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy and a senior scientist at The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, on the podcast.
The podcast, “Engaging Native Hawaiian Communities in Clinical Trials”, is part of the FDA Office of Minority Health and Health Equity’s Health Equity Forum podcast series.
The podcast highlights research by Dr. Taira and Dr. Todd Seto who is a cardiologist, director of academic affairs at The Queen’s Health System and professor and vice chair of the department of medicine at the University of Hawaiʻi John A. Burns School of Medicine.
Their research focuses on understanding and addressing health disparities in kānaka maoli and Pacific Islander communities in Hawaiʻi.
The team’s current project involves building the necessary infrastructure for more clinical trials.
“We’ve just completed a pilot study where we interviewed Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Filipino and White patients who were hospitalized with diabetes to determine their trust level in their physicians, beliefs about their medications, whether they’d be willing to participate in a clinical trial and what types of support they would need to do so,” Dr. Taira explained.
Better communication with those two groups, according to their findings, is needed by medical professionals in order to gain the trust of patients to enroll them in more clinical trials.
“We’ve found most patients have enormous trust in their healthcare providers so engaging with primary-care physicians and specialists is essential,” added Dr. Taira. “We need outreach and education for the primary care providers, and some of that could be done through curriculum at the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawai`i.”
There is also the issue of language challenges that are also more prevalent amongst Pacific Islanders.
“These patients can originally be from American Samoa, Western Samoa, Guam, Chuuk, Pompeii or Fiji,” added Dr. Taira. “For many of them, English was not their first language. In some cases, they may not understand what a clinical trial is so outreach to these groups needs to be much different.”
The researchers say they’ve been encouraged by the level of interest seen from Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander patients in being involved in clinical trials.
You can click here to listen to the podcast. Or you can listen to audio from the podcast in the video above. (Audio provided by FDA via University of Hawaiʻi Hilo.)
“[Response to the podcast] been overwhelmingly positive so going forward, we hope to take advantage of that momentum and build on it,” Dr. Taira concluded.