Waimānalo Pono Research Hui: Promoting Community-Driven and Culturally-Grounded Ethical Research

2023 Symposium Caring for Data in Hawaiʻi Keynote PresentationNative Hawaiians, or Kānaka Maoli, the first people to arrive and settle on the Hawaiian Islands, have been data scientists. To build their self-sufficient society, Native Hawaiians collected data about their natural surroundings to meticulously create sophisticated and sustainable resource management and food systems, which for centuries fed up to a million people on the islands. However, the spread of Western imperialism across the Pacific in the early 19th century led to forced assimilation and the illegal occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. Like other Indigenous communities and communities of color, Native Hawaiians have a long history of being the subject of unethical and exploitative research. To shift the power imbalances and colonial paradigm of research, many Native scholars, community leaders, and their allies advocate for decolonizing methodologies that revitalize and integrate cultural practices into the research. One example of decolonizing research is the Waimānalo Pono Research Hui, a community-academic group formed to promote community-driven and culturally-centered research. This presentation describes how the Waimānalo Pono Research Hui was established and the structures that have been developed to ensure research is community-driven, culturally-centered, and ethical. We will also share recommendations and lessons learned for researchers who strive to transform the way we care for data and our communities through research

Impacts of a university philosophy outreach program at Kailua High School

The University of Hawai’i at Mānoa’s Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education (UHM Uehiro Academy) prepares, supports and sustains philosophy for children Hawai‘i (p4cHI) educators, researchers, and students in Hawai‘i and beyond. This paper documents the impact of the Uehiro Academy’s philosophy outreach program at Kailua High School (KHS), a public secondary school on the Hawaiian Island of O’ahu. It describes the twenty year partnership between the University and KHS, which built a foundation for p4cHI to become integrated across the curriculum and within the school culture. To better understand the overall impact of the UHM Uehiro Academy philosophy outreach program on KHS, researchers asked, ‘How has the UHM Uehiro Academy philosophy outreach program impacted the school culture at KHS?’ Qualitative methods were applied to design and conduct a research study, which included interviewing 68 members of the KHS community. Data analysis revealed four main themes: (1) a schoolwide learner-centred pedagogy, (2) a place for learning more than just academics, (3) a community of diverse and connected individuals, (4) a commitment to professional growth for the purpose of a better world. The paper ends with conclusions, implications of the findings, and the researchers reflecting on the findings, including the benefits and challenges of university philosophy outreach programs in the secondary school setting

Pili Pono Practice: A Qualitative Study on Reimagining Native Hawaiian Food Sovereignty through MALAMA Backyard Aquaponics

Living in one of the most remote island chains in the world, Native Hawaiians developed sophisticated food cultivation systems that sustained a thriving and robust population for centuries. These systems were disrupted by colonization, which has contributed to the health disparities that Native Hawaiians face today. MALAMA, a culturally-grounded backyard aquaponics program, was developed to promote food sovereignty among Native Hawaiians. This study utilized participant interview and focus group data to identify how participating in the MALAMA program impacts the wellbeing. The findings demonstrate that MALAMA enhanced the participants’ pilina (relationship, connection) to traditional foods, land, cultural identity, family, and community, which contributed to the quick adoption of the program into Native Hawaiian communities. To address food insecurity, it is imperative to seek Indigenous-developed, community-based, and culturally-grounded programs and solutions like the MALAMA program

Hawai‘i’s Caring Communities Initiative: Mobilizing Rural and Ethnic Minority Communities for Youth Suicide Prevention

Youth suicide is a serious, yet preventable, public health concern for ethnic minorities and rural communities. This paper describes the youth leadership model utilized by Hawai‘i’s Caring Communities Initiative (HCCI) and provides reflections on the important factors for success in implementing a youth and community advocacy project for youth suicide prevention. HCCI partnered with six youth and community organizations who serve ethnic minority and rural communities across the State of Hawai‘i to train youth leaders and community members in suicide prevention, in order to develop community awareness activities that are grounded in each community’s strengths and needs. The work of a youth leadership group on the island of Kaua‘i is provided as an example to demonstrate the positive rippling effects that health promotion activities can have when they are youth-driven. Important factors to consider for similar interventions that aim to engage youth to address health disparities include prioritizing relationships among all partners, building the capacity of community partners, and providing meaningful leadership opportunities for youth to serve as role models in their communities

Kōkua Kaiāulu: Keeping the Native Hawaiian Community in Waimānalo Fed

Recent data suggest that similar to other minority communities in the US, Native Hawaiians are more likely to contract and suffer from COVID-19, exacerbating health and social disparities. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant disruptions in employment and economic insecurity, both of which are intertwined with food insecurity. This paper describes the efforts of Ke Kula Nui O Waimānalo, a grassroots Native Hawaiian organization, to meet both the immediate and long-term needs related to food insecurity in the Waimānalo community. Numerous organizations from multiple sectors collaborated to provide over 24,000 prepared healthy meals and 3,550 fresh produce boxes as well as seeds and plant starters to over 6,500 Waimānalo families and community members who are vulnerable to food insecurity. In addition to meeting the immediate needs of the community, community resilience is being built by creating permanent areas of food sources in the community to teach community members a variety of ways of growing their own food. Using a land-based and community-driven approach, Native Hawaiian worldview of health and healing need to be the foundation of promoting health and resilience in Native Hawaiian communities

Cross-National Differences in Victimization : Disentangling the Impact of Composition and Context

Varying rates of criminal victimization across countries are assumed to be the outcome of countrylevel structural constraints that determine the supply ofmotivated o¡enders, as well as the differential composition within countries of suitable targets and capable guardianship. However, previous empirical tests of these ‘compositional’ and ‘contextual’ explanations of cross-national di¡erences have been performed upon macro-level crime data due to the unavailability of comparable individual-level data across countries. This limitation has had two important consequences for cross-national crime research. First, micro-/meso-level mechanisms underlying cross-national differences cannot be truly inferred from macro-level data. Secondly, the e¡ects of contextual measures (e.g. income inequality) on crime are uncontrolled for compositional heterogeneity. In this paper, these limitations are overcome by analysing individual-level victimization data across 18 countries from the International CrimeVictims Survey. Results from multi-level analyses on theft and violent victimization indicate that the national level of income inequality is positively related to risk, independent of compositional (i.e. micro- and meso-level) di¡erences. Furthermore, crossnational variation in victimization rates is not only shaped by di¡erences in national context, but also by varying composition. More speci¢cally, countries had higher crime rates the more they consisted of urban residents and regions with lowaverage social cohesion.

Fifteen new risk loci for coronary artery disease highlight arterial-wall-specific mechanisms

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although 58 genomic regions have been associated with CAD thus far, most of the heritability is unexplained, indicating that additional susceptibility loci await identification. An efficient discovery strategy may be larger-scale evaluation of promising associations suggested by genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Hence, we genotyped 56,309 participants using a targeted gene array derived from earlier GWAS results and performed meta-analysis of results with 194,427 participants previously genotyped, totaling 88,192 CAD cases and 162,544 controls. We identified 25 new SNP-CAD associations (P < 5 × 10(-8), in fixed-effects meta-analysis) from 15 genomic regions, including SNPs in or near genes involved in cellular adhesion, leukocyte migration and atherosclerosis (PECAM1, rs1867624), coagulation and inflammation (PROCR, rs867186 (p.Ser219Gly)) and vascular smooth muscle cell differentiation (LMOD1, rs2820315). Correlation of these regions with cell-type-specific gene expression and plasma protein levels sheds light on potential disease mechanisms

The JCMT BISTRO Survey: Studying the Complex Magnetic Field of L43

We present observations of polarized dust emission at 850 μm from the L43 molecular cloud, which sits in the Ophiuchus cloud complex. The data were taken using SCUBA-2/POL-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope as a part of the BISTRO large program. L43 is a dense (NH 10 22 2 ~ –1023 cm−2) complex molecular cloud with a submillimeter-bright starless core and two protostellar sources. There appears to be an evolutionary gradient along the isolated filament that L43 is embedded within, with the most evolved source closest to the Sco OB2 association. One of the protostars drives a CO outflow that has created a cavity to the southeast. We see a magnetic field that appears to be aligned with the cavity walls of the outflow, suggesting interaction with the outflow. We also find a magnetic field strength of up to ∼160 ± 30 μG in the main starless core and up to ∼90 ± 40 μG in the more diffuse, extended region. These field strengths give magnetically super- and subcritical values, respectively, and both are found to be roughly trans-Alfvénic. We also present a new method of data reduction for these denser but fainter objects like starless cores