This TED Darwin talk touches me as an indigenous Micronesian educator in the US. It is relevant to me as I have just started a new job as coordinator of the Students of Hawaii Advanced Research Program (SHARP), a joint effort between the Department of Anthropology and the Daniel J. Inouye College of Pharmacy at UH Hilo. SHARPʻs overarching goal is to increase the number of underrepresented Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islander student researchers who will ultimately obtain their PhD degrees in biomedical and behavioral sciences.
According to the Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (RISE) grant proposal from the University of Hawaii at Hilo, “Native Hawai‘ians (NH) and Pacific Islanders (PI) are at risk for high rates of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure in addition to increasing rates of alcohol and substance use, and domestic violence.” The university is making a concentrated effort to address the urgent need for biomedical research to address these health issues effectively from within the NH and PI community rather than from outside.
I am proud to be on the team with the difficult task of informing, motivating, developing, training, inspiring, organizing a cadre of indigenous Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students to engage in research. I think itʻs vitally important to ensure that the research projects our SHARP students engage in are completely relevant to their communities. Thatʻs the only way we would stand a chance of making this a successful endeavor.
