LIHU‘E — WE, a hui for health, wrapped up its two weekends on Kaua‘i with a two-day on-site event offering free health screenings at Kukui Grove Center, starting Friday night and ending Saturday afternoon. “This was a real good trip,”
LIHU‘E — WE, a hui for health, wrapped up its two weekends on Kaua‘i with a two-day on-site event offering free health screenings at Kukui Grove Center, starting Friday night and ending Saturday afternoon.
“This was a real good trip,” said Anne Chipchase of ‘Ohana Health Plan. “It was a real country setting and we met people who really needed help when they came to the clinics. I really enjoy this program when you meet directly with the people who really need the help and you can help them.”
Roy Nishida of the East Kaua‘i Lions Club — and a previous member of the Vision Van program which accompanied the WE on-site screenings — said that during the two weekends, the program processed about 130 people. And among those were people who really needed help with their vision, Nishida said.
The WE, a hui for health, was created in 2011 and based on Hawai‘i values and local relationships to give Kaua‘i people access to screenings and information to help them understand their role in their own health, according to a news release.
“You don’t get health from the doctor,” said John “Hau‘oli” Tomoso of Maui’s Hui No Ke Ola Pono. “You give health to yourself.”
During the Kaua‘i tour, which started June 22 at the Kilauea Neighborhood Center and wound its way out to the Waimea Plantation Cottages before ending at Kukui Grove Center, residents could get a wide range of health screenings and information on a variety of health-related subjects from the different WE members and the Lions Clubs of Kaua‘i.
“The Vision Van, brought here through the courtesy of Young Brothers, offered free retinal screening for diabetes,” Nishida said. “Additionally, the Lions Club was distributing free reading glasses.”
Other screenings included spirometry lung function test, glucose, hemoglobin A1C and cholesterol testing, a take-home kidney function test, women’s health and breast examination training and information, hepatitis risk assessment and screening, hearing testing and learning disabilities information, smoking cessation counseling, family caregiver counseling, organ donorship counseling, mental health information, peer education and resource publications, family-focused education, issues with diagnosis and treatment of cancer and education and issues surrounding Medicare.
WE is made up of a consortium of not-for-profit health advocacy groups, government agencies, native Hawaiian health organizations, the state’s premiere hospital, ‘Ohana Health Plan and the Lions Clubs of District 50.
WE works to give each individual actionable information about their personal health situation with the goal of motivating each person to take responsibility for their own health.
• Dennis Fujimoto, photographer and staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 253) or dfujimoto@ thegardenisland.com.
