Community is very important to me, and I consider a resilient and healthy community being crucial to successful well-being. As our island struggles with mental health provider shortages, over-utilization of medical services for mental health crises, and increased rates of depression, anxiety, and deaths by suicide, especially in our youth, I chose my doctoral course of study to focus on integrating health systems. Through my work and community involvement, being witness to an obvious need to collaboratively address mental health within our rural healthcare settings was the catalyst that threw me back into school.

 

In 2020, I partnered with the team at Kapa'a Pediatrics to further pursue a mission to break the healthcare silos, eliminate the mental health stigma and ultimately promote  recognition that focusing on whole health is significant to well-being. Project aims include suicide prevention in teens, promoting knowledge and awareness to parents of youth on physical, mental, and behavioral health risk factors, teaching parenting skills that focus on protective factors and reducing health risks, creating community partnerships to align the medical and mental health community, and aiding in the vision to increase community resilience.