The University of Hawai‘i Cancer Center and the John A. Burns School of Medicine have launched the Ka ‘Umeke Lama initiative to address health disparities and access to care in the state.
Aspects of the plan include creating a medical oncology fellowship program, developing telehealth systems and using artificial intelligence-based cancer clinical trial screenings and monitoring tools.
The mission is to provide equitable access to high-quality cancer care in Hawai‘i and across the Pacific Islands.
“In the next few months, the education team has already started doing more education of current cancer care providers,” said Lee Buenconsejo-Lum, JABSOM's associate dean for academic affairs.
"So it's not just physicians, but also nurses, pharmacists, social workers, whoever is involved in cancer care. We're trying to develop more of a regularly occurring statewide opportunity for not only doing lectures and discussions but actually having conversations.”
