The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health Prize celebrates communities across the U.S. that highlight locally-led solutions to healthier futures. Molokaʻi was one of nine communities awarded this year.
Puna Kalipi is the manager of the Land Back initiative at the nonprofit Sustʻāinable Molokai. She said that for her, the prize honors Dr. Emmett Aluli, a beloved Molokaʻi physician who passed away in 2022.
“He would always say 'the health of the land is the health of the people, and the health of the people is the health of the land,’" Kalipi said. “So we wrote this application, partly in honor of him and his legacy. He cared and loved so deeply for not just Molokaʻi, but for all of the ʻāina across Hawaiʻi.”
“I think how [the RWJF] had described their the prize itself, really jived with how Molokaʻi is forced to approach public health, because we know that outside won't save us, and that we have to build our own like community systems of care amongst each other and on Molokaʻi that has to look different,” Kalipi continued, “because there're not many doctors that will track that Mokulele flight across the ocean to maybe get stuck for a few days.”
This year’s nine winning communities illustrate the range and magnitude of those solutions and their real-world implications, according to the RWJF. Along with Molokaʻi, the prize-winning communities are the City of Jurupa Valley, California; City of Trenton, New Jersey; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Juneau, Alaska; Lower Eastern Shore, Maryland, and Sussex County, Delaware; Milwaukee County, Wisconsin; Sacramento, California; and Tribes in the Great Lakes Region.
“These communities demonstrate an unwavering commitment to creating a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right,” said RWJF President and CEO Richard E. Besser. “At a time when our shared values are under assault, their leadership and innovation in the face of adversity are models for partners everywhere for creating a better world, one where everyone’s children and grandchildren can thrive.”
Since 2013, 68 communities across the United States have been awarded the RWJF Culture of Health Prize. Each awardee this year received $250,000.
Culture of Health prize organizers acknowledged in Molokaʻi's win that, unlike other Hawaiian Islands shaped by tourism and outside interests, the island has long prioritized its ʻāina, community, health, and self-sufficiency.
“But this commitment has come at a cost, including limited access to services like healthcare, high poverty rates, and ongoing threats to land and resources,” the RWJF noted in a press release. “Today, the Molokaʻi community aims to address these issues by preserving and promoting the island’s unique culture, traditions, and customs, including an effort to buy back a large portion of its land to help protect the lifeways that sustain its people and its land.”
Kalipi said the award speaks to the community’s generational efforts.
“We really wrote the application with a perspective of planetary health, because really, that's what Uncle Emmett was talking about. And now that Western science is catching up to Indigenous knowledge, we're able to start to build on the existing legacies that Molokaʻi has for generations upheld, and now, like with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Prize, it's also being honored and celebrated."
Kalipi said this is just the start. Along with a community effort to buy over 55,000 acres of land on the island currently owned by Molokaʻi Ranch, the island’s initiatives seek to strengthen the community’s future.
“Our community wants to get to 100% renewable energy in the next five to 10 years, and we have an energy co-op,” Kalipi explained. “We really want to make sure that we have our climate solutions prepared. So we're doing a lot of like climate change planning, with our families, on how and where they could possibly relocate, or how they could remain, and, you know, build up. Molokaʻi has always been a community of 'we get 'em, and we going do 'em, together.’”
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