A teaching team from the Department of Native Hawaiian Health at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) won a LIMElight award for Sustained Excellence in Indigenous Health Curriculum Implementation. The award recognizes “outstanding approaches to the implementation of indigenous health content in medical curricula, which are sustained and supported by evidenced-based processes.”
The award recognized the 13-year effort of the C3 (which refers to “cultural competency curriculum”) team at JABSOM to build an integrated cultural competency curriculum, centered on Native Hawaiian health.Through team efforts, a single cultural immersion weekend has expanded across the first three years of medical school to incorporate a series of workshops (colloquia), didactic lectures, electives, immersive experiences, a longitudinal problem-based learning case that incorporates a standardized patient exercise, in addition to residency teaching workshops.
The LIMElight awards are presented at the biannual LIME (Leadership in Indigenous Medical Education) Connection conference, an international gathering of medical educators focused on Indigenous health. The conference includes academics and practitioners, as well as other stakeholders such as policymakers, indigenous students and community members. They recognize “the significant and outstanding work that staff, students and medical schools undertake in teaching and learning of Indigenous health, as well as student recruitment and support.”
This year, the 8th LIME Connection took place November 5–8 in Christchurch, New Zealand and was hosted by the University of Otago. Conference speakers and attendees included both indigenous and non-indigenous experts from Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Hawaiʻi, Canada and the U.S.
Martina Kamaka, project director and lead team member, says that this award is quite an honor as it was “given out by our peers in the field of indigenous health education” and it acknowledges and validates their hard work on an international level.
She said the two faculty members who attended LIME this year, Dee-Ann Carpenter and Vanessa Wong are C3 team members and that other faculty in attendance, Malia Lee and Kelli-Ann Voloch from JABSOM and Wesley Sumida from the UH Hilo College of Pharmacy, have assisted in teaching parts of the curriculum. Other UH C3 team members include: S. Kalani Brady, Malina Kaulukukui, Gregory Maskarinec, Bill Ahuna, LeShay Keliiholokai, Diane Paloma, Maria Chun and Tiffnie Kakalia.
Read more on the JABSOM website.
—By Tina Shelton
