Exerpt of Board Letter 1997-98

“On June 28th, 1997, Kokua Kalihi Valley held its twenty-fifth anniversary celebration. That day, Ms. Mary Judd, honorary chair of the KKV Capital Campaign Committee, picked up a jack hammer, flipped the switch, and became the first person to break ground for the Charles Judd Community Health Center. Scheduled for completion in December of 1998, the new 10,000 square foot facility will replace the severely crowded building on Gulick Avenue and address the human service needs of our community for decades to come…We will strive for a building that reflects the unique qualities of this community, including hospitality, warmth, informality.

Programmatically, we stressed integration and comprehensiveness. We worked to break down barriers between programs, between institutions, and between people, so that each Kalihi Valley resident who walks through our doors is received, first and foremost, as a whole human being, rather than a collection of adjustable parts. We enlarged even further our definition of health, to include economics and education, by emphasizing and expanding programs that foster basic skills, such as literacy, math, and job training. This year, we:

1) Expanded our family counseling program with a State contract to provide behavioral health services to school children.

2) Initiated a successful and innovative collaboration with Fern Elementary School with on-site dental screening, sealants, and referral for more than 250 students and sealants on more than 950 teeth.

3) Became a VISTA volunteer placement site.

4) Hired an education coordinator to oversee three after-school programs, a computer learning center, and a clinic-based literacy project called “Read-to-Me,” which has providers “prescribing” free books with each well-child visit, while volunteers read to children and parents in the waiting areas.

5) Overhauled our youth programs. With assistance from our Youth Coordinator, who returned from one year educational tour, we moved away from a problem-based approach, and toward a youth development model that includes intensive leadership development, career exploration, and basic skills acquisition.

6) Completed year three of an agency-wide quality assurance initiative that resulted in some of the most laudatory audits, from HMOs, government agencies, and private auditors, ever received by KKV.

We confront the challenge of finding approaches that reflect the unique values of community health, values that can radically transform every component of health care delivery, from information systems, to facility design, to program development, to quality assurance.

The challenges for next year remain significant. We consciously steer away from a growing obsession among health providers with the minutia of managed care, aware that, beyond a clear-headed need to be cost effective and well-informed, this steals time and money from the real task of health care, which is to help families and communities grow healthier and stronger…”