Photo credit: Innocenta Sound-Kikku
As a Hawaiʻi State university-based academic collective, the Māpuna Lab serves other Hawaiʻi State-based health programs and their community-based counterparts in promoting systemic change. Inspired by a widely-adopted Native Hawaiian health framework, Nā Pou Kihi, we support transdisciplinary movement-building to promote health equity in Hawaiʻi and believe that social justice is a public health necessity. In this capacity, our work prioritizes projects that operate at the intersection of culture, healing, health and justice, seeking opportunities to create space for community-driven priorities to take root.
If you are interested in working with the Māpuna Lab, a rate schedule is available by request at mapuna@hawaii.edu
7/1/2024-6/30/2026
Contact: Kauʻi Merritt (email: mapuna@hawaii.edu)
The original Hawai’i Opioid Initiative was launched in July 2017 by Governor David Ige in response to the national opioid crisis. Following five years of coordinated effort to reduce opioid misuse, the Māpuna Lab was contracted to complete the Hawai’i Opioid Initiative Needs Assessment and Strategic Planning for Rebranding. Using key lessons learned from the first stage of the Hawai’i Opioid Initiative and the Māpuna Lab’s evaluation, the second launch of the Hawai’i Overdose Initiative is set to launch in January 2025. This planned work will aim to highlight opioid misuse care and emergency response times in rural and primarily Native Hawaiian communities, continue to train healthcare providers to respond to the opioid crisis in a culturally-grounded manner, and to create a user-friendly data dashboard for opioid-related statistics.