Community Involvement

HMSA Foundation

Since 1998, the HMSA Foundation has committed over $15 million to strategic community investment projects that aim to improve the health and welfare of our communities. The Foundation supports efforts in four areas: Access to affordable health care, health promotion and disease prevention, health care delivery system, and general social welfare. In 2009, the HMSA Foundation committed $780,611 to support 11 programs. The following are just a few of the grants we supported.

Hawaii Nursing Simulation Center ($500,000 over five years)
The establishment of the Hawaii Nursing Simulation Center on Oahu as a statewide resource addresses the ongoing need for nursing clinical and workforce education. The grant supports the Center’s hub, a 10,000 sq. ft., state-of-the-art facility that will provide statewide network capabilities to serve as a focal site for clinical nursing education. The University of Hawaii School of Nursing and Dental Hygiene plans to increase professional nurses’ ability to ensure patient safety, assess competency, build advanced technical skills, and develop decision-making abilities of nurses and other health care providers. The Center will serve all Islands and link the existing simulation labs of the UH Statewide Nursing Consortium and hospitals throughout the State.

Molokai General Hospital ($2,500)
The HMSA Foundation partnered with The Queen’s Medical Center to support the Dialysis Patient Program that provided Molokai patients with transportation to Neighbor Islands for critical medical services during the Molokai water crisis in July 2009. The grant also supported Molokai’s community-wide flu clinic and education efforts.

Puna Community Medical Center ($50,000)
The grant supports the Urgent Care Facility project, which will equip and open an urgent-care facility in the rural, medically underserved Puna district of the Big Island. Extended hours, including weekends, will complement the meager existing services.

Hawaii Immunization Registry ($148,000, third year; $598,000, multi-year)
The Hawaii Department of Health’s Hawaii Immunization Registry (HIR) System will allow centralized tracking of immunization data from birth to death for Hawaii’s children and adults. The grant supports this cutting-edge system that will help more of Hawaii’s population receive needed vaccines. The creation of a statewide immunization registry will be an important tool in the state's disease prevention strategy for many generations to come.

Status: Initial implementation of the Hawaii Immunization Registry began in September 2008. As of Nov. 21, 2009, 5,370 patients with over 35,000 immunizations have been entered into the HIR. The Department of Health (DOH) began populating the HIR with data from newborn hepatitis vaccine administration forms, Stop Flu at School consent forms, and novel H1N1 vaccine distribution and monitoring. The DOH has also begun HIR marketing and recruitment efforts that include distribution of provider recruitment materials to pediatricians statewide and demonstrations of the HIR to physician organizations, providers and partners.