Happy New Year!

HHHRC wishes you and your loved ones health, happiness, and prosperity throughout 2022.

HHHRC is beginning the year with renewed energy during this latest stage of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. All staff are wearing KN-95 or N-95 masks, practicing social distancing, and taking necessary precautions to minimize the risk of viral spread when interacting with our clients and participants.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, HHHRC has provided essential services to under-resourced populations and have expanded our agency’s reach into the community.

· Our street medicine team provides wound care and linkage to behavioral health services, including those provided in our clinic, to those experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Our mobile medical unit, which debuted last summer, brings our street medicine team directly into the community

· We continue to support people living with HIV with medical case management services. We also continue to provide access to clean syringes to persons who inject drugs on O῾ahu, Kauai, Maui, and Hawai῾i Island. We area also working in urban Honolulu and the Upper Windward coast of O῾ahu with the unsheltered homeless to assist with outreach and housing placement.

· Our transgender services program, Kua῾ana Project, continues its work to help O῾ahu’s trans community with identity documents and their immediate health and housing needs.

· Last week, we held a food distribution event at Nā Kūpuna Makamae Center in Kaka῾ako, in partnership with Hawai῾i Foodbank. Mahalo to volunteers from the Rotary Club for their valued contribution of time and energy to help reduce our community’s food insecurity.

Hawaii’s state legislature also began earlier this month. Among the bills HHHRC is keeping a close watch on is HB 1675, which would increase access to HIV prevention medication for those aged 14-17. The bill is part of a package from the legislature’s newly formed Equality Caucus, co-chaired by Representative Adrian Tam and Senator Chris Lee.

We registered our support for a bill that would offer free menstrual products to public school and charter students. HHHRC re-iterated its support for a minimum wage increase and supports policy changes to increase revenues from top income earners. We are also tracking bills that impact our state’s homeless population and others impacted by economic and social structural inequities.