Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 10, Number 5, 1 May 1993 — Ola kino o nā Hawaiʻi [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Ola kino o nā Hawaiʻi

Hawaiian healih horizons

Nutritionist helps heal wrongs of the past

by Patrick Johnston As the first native Hawaiian to receive a degree in nutrition and a key player in lobbying for the Native Hawaiian Health Care Act, nutritionist and heahh crusader Claire Hughes has been at center stage of attempts to make native Hawaiians a stronger, healthier, and in turn, prouder people. As chief of nutrition at the Department of Heakh, Hughes coordinates a variety of healthrelated programs aimed at improving the heahh of Hawaiians. These include Nutralink, a disease-prevention program that helps individuals change their eating habits to avoid disease, and Nā Pu'uwai, the native Hawaiian heahh center on Moloka'i. Programs target specific loeations and groups on different

parts of the islands. Because native Hawaiians have some of the most serious heahh problems of all ethnic groups statewide,

this invariably means working closely with the community to address some of their concems. Hughes graduated from Kamehameha Schools in 1954 and went on to study nutrition at Oregon State University. It was an ambitious endeavor, especially

as instructors at Kamehameha had told her she could never complete the course and would be beher off considering another profession. "I was told that I would never make it as a nutritionist," she

says. "As soon as I heard that, I had to accept the challenge." Nutritionists, while not doctors, have to go through mueh of the

same training, take similar courses, and even spend a year inteming. Hughes returned to Hawai'i in 1959, enjoying a certain notoriety as the first person of Hawaiian ancestry to get a degree in nutrition. She worked as a nutritionist at the Kamehameha

Schools cafeteria and later entered University of Hawai'iMānoa to get a master's degree in public heahh. She explains, "I found it difficult to get into the public heahh field when I returned from the

mainiana as most or tnose invo!ved had graduated from UH and were part of a tight network. I decided to go back to school to open some doors." Hughes received her Master's

of Science in Public Heahh in 1969 and immediately started working at the Department of Heahh. In 1984, together with doctors Naleen Andrade and Emmett Aluli, she embarked on a plan to make a comprehensive study of native Hawaiian heahh. The Native Hawaiian Heahh Needs Assessment Study was presented to Congress in 1985 in an attempt to get federal funding for native Hawaiian heahh concerns. The result was the Native Hawaiian Heahh Care Act, a comprehensive bill that now provides funding for the Papa Ola Lōkahi native Hawaiian heahh centers around the islands whieh are carrying out the present diet programs. Hughes says that during the health needs study "native Hawaiian heahh was not in vogue" and they had to use a lot of non-government money to get things passed. "The lobbying we did in Washington was entirely privately funded. We stayed in friend's houses because the cost • V ■ . i

of hotels was too mueh." Now, thanks in part to people like Dr. Emmett Aluli on Moloka'i and DOH heahh educator Art Tani on Kaua'i, there are native Hawaiian diet programs on all major islands. Like many others working on diet issues, Hughes believes that the key to rebuilding the Hawaiian nation is re-establish-ing some of the customs that made Hawaiians a great people. She points out that the first impression of Hawaiians by Europeans was that they were tall and "slender of habit" and that only with the introduction of a high fat diet has the relative heahh of Hawaiians become so poor. "In many ways Hawaiians had a superior culture to that of the West. Our music, our way of reaching consensus, our diet, were all better than what was brought here. ... We can't go back to that time but we ean try to reverse the trends that are slowly destroying our people."

. X:% :: -Wm. * << Claire Hughes