April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, and a good time to talk about Hawaii Healthy Start. As many know, this was Hawaii’s homegrown, highly successful effort to support our most vulnerable families right from the start at birth of a new baby, averting abuse and neglect, strengthening families and enhancing school readiness. It became the model for the national Healthy Families America program with similar services now in most states.

Healthy Start was also one of the first services to be drastically cut in the recent economic downturn, leaving services only in Hilo and Leeward Oahu, unfortunately when overburdened families need support the most. People who are working with families across the state have voiced concern over the loss of this service.

Child advocates, including One Voice for Hawaii’s Children, a grassroots network of professionals working with young children, are determined to bring it back.

The Tobacco Settlement Fund is the proposed funding mechanism with good reason. The 2000 landmark Centers for Disease Control "Adverse Childhood Experiences" study that involved 17,000 middle-aged Kaiser patients, showed direct links between traumas of early childhood and many costly chronic behaviors and diseases, including smoking, chronic obstructive lung disease and cancer.

The authors concluded that people who experienced trauma in early years suffer from long-term post-traumatic stress and use tobacco (as well as alcohol and drugs) to self-medicate.

For this reason, prevention of early trauma is a critical component of reducing tobacco use, particularly among those most likely to become addicted.

This was recognized by the Legislature in 2002 when it included maternal child health services as eligible for tobacco settlement funding.

Modest funding this year will maintain the two existing sites and enable an improved Healthy Start program to be re-established gradually over at least the next four years, serving only the very highest-risk families in communities across the state.

Many hope that the Legislature will find a way to maintain services and support a new beginning for Healthy Start and our youngest keiki.