Hawaii officials Wednesday celebrated the University of Hawaii’s fourth consecutive year of record- setting external funding, which they said keeps UH as the primary source of cancer research in the Pacific and provides high-skilled job opportunities for bright students who want to pursue medical careers in the islands.
U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda told a gathering at UH’s Cancer Center on Wednesday that UH’s record $734 million in external funding — most of it from the federal government — means more career paths for local students like her who grew up believing their only hope for a prosperous, challenging career meant pursuing their dreams on the mainland.
Instead, Tokuda — then a 14-year-old student at Kaneohe’s Castle High School — rode TheBus to UH’s then-dilapidated medical school and knocked on doors looking for specialists in genetic modification.
Tokuda found them and they helped inspire a dream that she had a future by staying home.
So increased federal funding for UH means more research projects, more researchers and more opportunities for local students to — as Tokuda described it — participate in “life-saving clinical trials.”
“These are good-paying jobs,” Tokuda said.
But Tokuda joined U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, Gov. Josh Green and UH President Wendy Hensel in saying the fight for future federal funding will be hard.
“We will fight like hell to make sure that those research dollars come to Hawaii,” Tokuda said. “… It’s about making sure that other kids like me (don’t) … have to feel that they have to leave Hawaii to make their mark. … You have my word. I’ll fight like a mother to make sure that this is a promise we can leave for all of our kids.”
Federal funding for UH, Hawaii nonprofit organizations that serve diverse populations and other Hawaii recipients of federal aid was jeopardized after President Donald Trump in January began ordering federal agencies to eliminate programs aimed at DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — and made nationwide efforts to purge the federal workforce, including eliminating the U.S. Department of Education and cutting university grants aimed at diversity.
UH’s current “extramural funding” represents an additional $118.3 million — or 19.2% — over last year’s previous extramural funding record of $615.7 million.
Speaker after speaker Wednesday praised UH faculty, staff, professors, researchers and students for the quality of their work that attracted another record year of federal funding.
“These are outstanding numbers,” said Vassilis Syrmos, UH Manoa’s interim provost, who oversees federal relations for the UH System. “These are unbelievable numbers.”
But Syrmos cautioned that the next three budget years under Trump will be tough. “There are going to be some difficult times ahead for us,” he said.
The need for additional data on cancer rates among Hawaii’s various ethnic groups remains both personal and professional for Green, who began his Hawaii medical career in a rural clinic on Hawaii island, treating needy and underserved ethnic populations of patients.
First lady’s Jaime’s Green’s mother died of cancer when Jaime was 9, while her mother’s diagnosis could have been detected years earlier had she received proper health care, Gov. Green said.
During his own medical practice, Green said he often treated patients who were unaware of the cancer risks for their special ethnic populations, which could have led to earlier cancer detection and treatment for them.
Schatz called UH’s latest record year of external funding “a success story.”
“When the University of Hawaii succeeds,” Schatz said, “Hawaii succeeds.”
So he and Tokuda pledged to keep fighting for federal funding in Congress despite what Schatz called “a rocky” next few years for federal funds for Hawaii.
“I’m not scared,” Schatz said.
Source: The Garden Island
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