Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 12, Number 7, 1 July 1995 — Hāna outreach worker targets AIDS in the Hawaiian community [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Hāna outreach worker targets AIDS in the Hawaiian community

by Patrick Johnston When the Maui AIDS Foundation opened its doors 10 years ago the vast majority of Hawai'i AIDS sufferers were gay, non-Hawaiian men: lt

was easy for native Hawaiians to dismiss the disease as a foreign problem. Since then a lot has changed. Thanks largely to an extensive education campaign within the gay community the incidence of the disease in that group has stabilized. However, heterosexual men, women, and youth are seeing a dramatic increase in infections. Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians appear to be especially at risk: According to information released by the state Department of Health HIV/STD prevention program, Hawaiians and partHawaiians make up the fastest growing ethnic group in Hawai'i to be infected with AIDS. "We have an anonymous testing program but we do take some demographic information," explains

Roy Ohye, program coordinator for the state STD/HIV Prevention Program. "Within the AsianPacific category we collect data by race, Samoan, Chinese, Hawaiian. This shows the increase in infections among the Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian group." The rise is especially acute among women and youth - groups whose members think they have little ehanee of catching the disease. "The people who think they are least likely to catch the disease are the ones most at risk," says Linda Morrison, Maui AIDS Foundation executive director. Mueh of the reason for this is a laek of education - both about the risk of the disease, and how to prevent infection. On Maui, this laek of education is compounded by the island's popularity as a visitor destination and the rural isolation of many of the Hawaiians living there. Morrison explains that young Hawaiian adults from rural communities "go to Klhei and Lahaina to party," become infected, and bring the disease back to their communities. It is a lethal combination for the spreading of sexually transmittable diseases. But reaching Hawaiians in rural areas and informing them of the importance of taking preventive steps has been a challenge.

Non-Hawaiian outreach workers ean have difficulty eonnecting with the community and most educational materials available are produced by and for non-Hawaiians on the Mainland - not information that the loeal population ean easily identify with. To help deal with this problem last year the AIDS Foundation - with the support of an OHA grant - hired Lonni Eugene, a Hawaiian outreach worker, to work full time with the community in Hāna. "It is absolutely essential to have a person from the culture educate the community," Morrison explains, "We're really fortunate to have Lonni."

The OHA grant has helped in other ways. Past funding for the outreach worker from the state was not enough to provide a full time salary, making it difficult

for the worker to concentrate all her time and energy on her job. OHA's grant supports a full time salary. Eugene's office is in the Hāna Community Center and is open from 7:30 to 11:30 a.m. Her work involves interacting with the community and educating residents about HIV and AIDS. She does this any ehanee she gets, either in her office, at loeal schools or at her home. Hāna residents, knowing the work she does, regularly pull her over on the street to ask her for both advice and condoms. "No matter where I go the community reaction has been positive," Eugene says. She explains that, when she began her work a year ago, she felt it was important to

move gingerly into the community - not blast them daily with an earful of AIDS education. To do this she started with the kūpuna, gaining their trust by helping them with some of their daily tasks. After a while, she says the kūpuna became interested in her and the work she was doing. This helped her get into the families and talk openly about AIDS. "My goal was to establish eommunieation between parent and child, to open doors. ... I found I was doing sex education for them." Eugene now also works closely with the schools, focusing a lot of her attention on middle schools, hoping to teach healthy sexual habits before it's too late. "I give them the facts about HIV. ... I push abstinence," she says. To confront the laek of educational materials featuring Hawaiians, Eugene has started putting together posters using members of the Hawaiian community in Hāna. She is also helping the Hāna Youth Center produce an educational video, also

featuring Hāna residents. "Before, there wasn't any (loeal) educational material. Now there are Hawaiian kids in the posters. They ean relate to them." Eugene believes there has been a marked increase in AIDS awareness and greater openness to discuss the disease in the Hāna community in the past year. "There used to be this attitude that 'only haole mahus get this (AIDS)'," she points out. "Now things have changed. They are getting it." Lonni Eugene ean be reached at the Hāna Community Center daily from 7:30 to 11:30 a.m. at 248-7801. For more information about OHA's grant program eall 594-1888.