‘Oihana Ola Kino – “Careers in Health”

2006 Summer Leadership Program
This past year, Maui County Area Health Education Center collaborated with Na Pu’uwai, Queen Liliuokalani Children’s Center, and Na Pua Noeau, to put together a Summer Leadership Program called `Oihana Ola Kino, for Maui County youth in the ninth through twelfth grades. This ten-day program provided 17 high schoolers from Molokai and Maui with knowledge of the various occupations and opportunities available in the field of healthcare.
We enjoyed health and cultural site visits to the Molokai Cowboy Connection with Uncle Jimmy Duvauchelle, Halawa’s lo`i patch with Uncle Lawrence Aki, paddling with Bojo Morris and Kanoho Helm, and other interesting outings.
Last year’s program focused on teaching our youth about the different medical specialties. We invited Bishop Museum to host its “Family Science Night” and “Medical Mystery” activities. Medical Mystery, is for students in kindergarten through to sixth grade, and teaches them how to research different illnesses that an individual has. Bishop Museum provided a training class for the kids to take, on how to run different medical stations. Some of the stations also included dental hygiene, optometry, and podiatry. As soon as the training was over, the children set up each station for students of another summer program, Summer Pals. The Summer Pals pretended to have illnesses, and the Careers in Health kids, acting as doctors, ran tests to discover the diagnoses. Medical Mystery was a success that day.
The Summer Pals enjoyed themselves and didn’t want the fun to end. At the same time, the summer program “doctors” learned and enjoyed the whole event. At the end of the program, we hosted Family Science Night, an event that invited the whole community to participate. The students went through training to prepare themselves on new stations that were progressively more advanced than the previous event. Their families showed up and watch the students perform as doctors. Parents were impressed with what the children had absorbed throughout our program and encouraged us to keep the program as an ongoing one.
The Careers in Health, `Oihana Ola Kino program was a success for us this past year, but this year should be even better. Look for announcements of next year’s program.

Huli Au Ola’s Summer Health Leadership Program 2007
This event will be hosted by Maui County AHEC, Na Pu`uwai, and QLCC, and is geared for students grades ninth through eleventh. Twenty students will be chosen from throughout Maui County, and will receive one college credit when they complete the ten-day program. The Leadership program highlights different health careers, featuring speakers who are specialists in their fields.
The ten-day camp promises to be filled with activities, games, new faces, lots of learning and lots of fun! All that’s required to apply is a 2.0 grade point average and a 200-word essay.
Applications will be available January 16, 2007. Call AHEC at 553-3623 for more information.