The University of Hawaii at Manoa announced Wednesday the launch of a first-of-its-kind program to prepare health professionals to tackle the medical problems of Native Hawaiians and other indigenous people.

"This is such an important area because we see such a major health disparity in our Native Hawaiian population that’s really mirrored in other indigenous populations throughout the world," said Jay Maddock, director of the Office of Public Health Studies in the John A. Burns School of Medicine. "You look at Native Americans, Alaskan natives, Maori, Aborigines, and that’s why it’s (the program) called Native Hawaiian and Indigenous Health because it really is the idea of ‘How do we have indigenous populations work together to come to common solutions for health disparities?’"

The program for the master’s of public health degree aims to prepare students for leadership roles in health, policy, research and culturally safe practices and services to benefit indigenous communities. The program will start in the fall.

"Indigenous communities will be great beneficiaries of this program, but students can also learn a lot from those communities," said Treena Delormier, an assistant professor in the program who is Mohawk and grew up in the Mohawk community of Kahnawake in Quebec, Canada. "It’s about balance and recognizing the value of different forms of knowledge, adapting traditional into the modern."

Kimiko Wilson, a first-year master’s of public health student at UH and a Native Hawaiian who lives on Hawaiian Homes land in Waipahu, said this program is personal for her.

"With the health disparities and increasing negative health statistics happening within our Native Hawaiian and indigenous communities, I felt there was a need for me to enroll in this program so I can help improve the health status of my people," she said. "It’s looking at, ‘How can we incorporate Hawaiian cultural values, beliefs and practices in medicine and public health, within our everyday lives?’ They don’t need to be separate.

"I’m excited to see how we can combine the two, culture and science, in order to better the health status of indigenous populations."

Wilson will be part of the inaugural class of students in the program set to graduate next spring.

Planning for the program started two years ago and was chosen for funding from about a dozen other Native Hawaiian program proposals, Maddock said.

Dr. Jerris Hedges, dean of the medical school, said the program sprang from an effort by Virginia Hinshaw, former UH-Manoa chancellor, to "grow the university in ways that are meaningful to the community and ways that bring different elements of the campus together synergistically."