About Kōkua Mau Hawaii's Hospice and Palliative Care Organization
Kōkua Mau was founded as a statewide end-of-life care coalition in 1999 under a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community-State Partnership grant and as a direct result of the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Living and Dying with Dignity (1998). The Panel's recommendations included:
- Increase public & professional awareness
- Increase access to spiritual/cultural resources
- Improve pain management efforts
- Increase hospice utilization
- Increase completion and use of advance directives
In June 2007, Kōkua Mau merged with the Hawaiian Islands Hospice Organization to form Kōkua Mau, Inc., a statewide hospice and palliative care organization. Its purpose is to improve quality of life for people living in Hawai‘i by promoting excellence in hospice, end-of-life care, palliative care, and early advance care planning through:
b) development of professional and organizational healthcare capacity;
d) statewide leadership; and
e) collaboration among its members and throughout the community.
Over the last year (2010), we have been involved with an extensive strategic planning process to expand Kokua's Mau's vision and mission to reflect our growth in the last ten years.
Kokua Mau's vision is a community where:
the people of Hawaii are treated with dignity, compassion and love throughout their lives.
To make that vision a reality, Kokua Mau's mission is:
to weave a lei of caregiving and support so that the people of Hawaii facing serious illness can live in the place of their choice, with relief of pain and suffering and according to their values, beliefs and traditions.