“View of Smallpox Hospital” by Paul Emmert, c. 1853-59
(Hawaii Historical Society, Wikimedia Common)
Building Resilient Communities: School-Community Health Partnerships to Help Control COVID-19
Date: Tuesday, August 11, 2020
Time: 3:30-4:30pm
Location: Online, via Zoom
Cost: Free event, registration required
The Hanahau'oli Professional Development Center invites you to a free public talk with the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa's Dr. Alika Maunakea and Dr. Ruben Juarez on COVID-19 and the potential of school-community health partnerships. They will address what we need to do, why we need to work together, and conclude with an invitation to participate in school-community health partnership opportunities.
Historically, a holistic response to widespread disease in Hawaiʻi incorporated aloha at its foundation, knowing that the responsibility to control and eradicate disease rested with all. What we did in the past holds true in the present as cases spike to over 100 per day and testing capacity falls below what is needed for rapid reporting of results, contact tracing, and the quarantine or isolation of those exposed or testing positive.
Daily cases from the Hawaii COVID-19 Dashboard show a pronounced shift from travel related to community spread contraction. Though children over 10 and young adults do not become as ill or contract COVID-19 as often as older adults or those with preexisting health conditions, we now know that they can be asymptomatic carriers, bringing it home and to school. After Hawaiʻi state mandates to stay home in late-March, we experienced a dramatic reduction in our Rt, or the average number of people who become infected by an infectious person, but after opening in May, our Rt has increased and shows that infections will continue to spread rapidly as asymptomatic spread and limited testing capacity make it harder for contact tracers to identify affected individuals and clusters in time to contain further spread.
Proactive community advocacy for expanding COVID-19 testing is needed now. Certain ethnic groups (Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, Native Hawaiians) and communities are more at risk due to multigenerational homes, crowded living conditions, economic vulnerability, reduced access to health care, work in essential services, and cultures of closeness that are now a risk factor.
Schools become sources of resilience when informed educators prepare students and provide outreach to families and the community by teaching, modeling and promoting mask wearing, cleaning, social distancing, and studying causes of clusters and spikes in cases. School-community health partnerships can further empower schools with targeted education, research, data, and transparent communication. Schools that partner with parents, community health centers, and researchers support the collection of localized, community level data needed to inform actions and policies to reduce COVID-19 transmission.
Pupukahi i holomua. Let’s all come together to move forward in the best interest of everyone.
About the Presenters:
Dr. Alika Maunakea is an associate professor of epigenomics in the Department of Anatomy, Biochemistry, and Physiology at JABSOM. He applies interdisciplinary approaches to address health disparities in the community by integrating systems biology in biomedical, laboratory-based research and Hawaiian knowledge in partnership with community-based organizations.
Dr. Ruben Juarez is a professor in the Economics Department and a UHERO research fellow at the University of Hawaii Manoa. His research includes measuring the health, economic and wellbeing impacts of community-based programs around Hawaii using social network approaches.