06/04/2020
STATEMENT FROM ROBERT HIROKAWA, CEO, AND CHERYL VASCONCELLOS, BOARD CHAIR
The Hawai‘i Primary Care Association, and its community health center members, share in the pain and anguish over the myriad injustices that have torn our communities apart for decades, injustices which now have names and faces we cannot forget. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice; names on a seemingly endless, tragic list that should never be.
We share in the grief over lives lost, and in the anger at our collective inability to learn deep and thoughtful lessons about our shared history.
Vital to learning those lessons is fearlessly speaking our truths, and here now is an inconvenient truth about our country: people of color have been systematically oppressed and harmed with impunity for years. Beyond the terrifying and horrific physical violence is a structural violence in our society that is evident in every statistic and in every data point you can measure. This structural violence is why people of color have less accumulated wealth, less access to education and housing and healthcare, and less safety in their own homes. It’s why they live shorter, poorer, and sicker lives. It is the root cause of every disparity that plagues us.
The cities and towns where our health centers operate have been called ‘underserved’ and ‘vulnerable’ communities, because they are often made up of poor minorities. But they have been made vulnerable and underserved, made unequal by design, the consequence of policies that favor one class of people over another.
For over thirty years, we have done more than simply stand with those who work and fight for social equity and justice; we have worked and fought right beside them, on the front lines in our communities, increasing access to fresh healthy foods, creating economic opportunity for minority populations, forging educational partnerships, and transforming how health care is delivered to all, regardless of their ethnicity, orientation, age, or insurance status.
We have long believed that health is everything, and it is the guiding principle on which we endeavor to fulfill our mission.
We can never go back to a period before this tumult, we can never erase the physical, mental, and emotional scars of this time. These tragic events have opened the eyes of the entire world to the structural flaws in our society.
To move forward, we implore policymakers to treat all of their constituents with equal measures of fairness and opportunity, to recognize the injustice of always asking more from those who have always had so much less. We challenge ourselves and all who work with us to behave more collectively and to speak truths more clearly, to learn and grow together.
United, we will do the hard work of rebuilding a more just, more equitable, and thriving society. HPCA and its health centers will continue cultivating communities that nurture and inspire, fostering communities that are safe, healthy, and prosperous. We remain committed to this work, reflected by the diversity of our communities, our partners, and our futures, and we ask you to join this mission with us.
