Dr. Dianne Bowen-Coleman (Dr. Dianne) was born on January 25, 1959 in Huntington, West Virginia. She is passionate about serving the underserved and has devoted her life to promoting the health and wellbeing of Native peoples. At the time this interview was conducted, she served as the Statewide Director of Vision Programs for Project Vision Hawai’i (PVH). In the time of COVID-19, Dr. Dianne pivoted PVH’s vision team to meet the immediate needs in the community. She partnered with the DOE and Chef Hui to provide 100 family sized meals to families of homeless children and youth for six weeks at the beginning of the pandemic. Later on, Dr. Dianne oversaw PVH’s COVID-19 testing and vaccination efforts, which received state funding. Throughout the pandemic, Dr. Dianne worked tirelessly to meet the evolving needs of the state while maintaining PVH’s vision services amid lockdowns.

“I started out by contacting the person that I'd known for quite a while in the Department of Education's Education for Homeless Children and Youth...So I contacted her and said, "hey, how can we work together?" And she had similar concerns herself because she has all these families. And there were just over 3,600 children in the DOE in unstable and unsheltered housing. So 3,600 students across the state. And she's thinking, how are these children going to get fed? How are these children going to get their food, because many, if not all of them get their food at school. They get breakfast at school, they get lunch at school. And that might be the only two meals they get in a day...So we got together and across the state we put the vision team into action. And our vision team became delivery drivers, basically. So our team would pick up laptops or pick up the homework assignments at the school or some other location and drop it off at a designated location for a particular student or family. They might pick up completed homework from that student or family and then take it back to the school. They delivered across the state, delivered food that was donated by local farmers. We delivered blankets, towels, diapers, formula, school supplies, art supplies, gift cards, all kinds of things just to be able to meet this community need. And on Oahu, we were able to take it a step further. So on Oahu, I have known and worked with a person in Aloha Harvest. And when I called her, she told me that she had retired but told me who to get in contact with currently at Aloha Harvest. And when I spoke with Aloha Harvest, they were very helpful and put me in touch with Chef Hui. So when I got in touch with Chef Hui, they said, "this is fabulous timing because we have this new grant where we can provide family-size meals. How many do you want?" And at that point, I had no idea how many I wanted or needed, but we settled on 100 family-size meals a week for six weeks. And that was a short term grant that they had for six weeks.”

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Leslie "Les" K. Chock is the Director of Regional Infection Control at Kaiser Permanente and a professor of microbiology at Leeward Community College where he has taught for over 25 years. He was born in Hilo, Hawaiʻi and currently resides in ʻAiea on the island of Oahu. He received his BA in biology and MA in microbiology at UH Mānoa. He carries an extensive background in infectious disease serving as a member of the Hawaii Disaster Medical Assistance Team. During the pandemic, Les has utilized his background in infection control to protect staff and patients at Kaiser.

"And then when the pandemic started increasing in frequency, everything started to blur together. But one of the things is when we actually had the surge, I would actually round on the COVID units every single day. I would visit the units and say, ʻOkay, talk to the staff, what's working, what's not working, how are your supplies?' And then our hospital also had daily briefings. Every morning we have what is called a morning huddle. We'd go over with the nurse managers and all the different departments. Here's our status. What's going on? So we did this every day. And this is typical of any other.... All hospitals did this. It's standard procedure to get a pulse of where we are. What you want to do on a pandemic is you want to stay ahead of the curve. Since we're in Hawaiʻi, it's like surfing a wave. You keep an eye out to see there's a swell coming, right. And you get ready for the swell and then you've got to stay ahead of the wave. You can't have the wave overtake you because then it'll be too late. So it's a challenge. But think about it. You want to catch the wave, and you want to stay ahead of the waves. "

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Monique Chyba was born in Switzerland after her parents fled the Czech Republic during Soviet occupation in 1968. Monique studieded mathematics throughout college receiving her BA and MA iu Geneva and her postdoc in Paris. She became an assistant professor in mathematics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2002 and was later promoted to full professor in 2012. Monique has always enjoyed mathematics and data driven modeling. When COVID-19 first appeared in Hawaii, Monique immediately began studying the data and invited a group of graduate students she was teaching to help with the research. Later on, Monique was invited by another member of the UH Mānoa faculty to join the Hawaiʻi Pandemic Applied Modeling Group (HiPAM) where she has provided pandemic models and forecasting for the State of Hawaiʻi.

"I taught Math 100 in the fall of 2020. I taught it in spring 2021, and I'm teaching now in fall 2021. And I have some survey, and we've done a unit on COVID where they looked at the numbers. And then I asked them question how it has impacted you. And we've sent some survey. And I have to say, there is a big range of different impacts. Some it impacted in more shallow life of, like, OK, I couldn't go to graduation for high school. And that I understand, and it's a little bit frustrating. But at the same time, there were other students that were impacted in a much more profound way. Although many of them actually lost their job especially in fall 2020. A lot of them work in a restaurant, and they tried to make some money. They lost that income that impacted them a lot, whether they could continue studying at the university or not. They also lost family members. Some got COVID. So it was really hard. And then suddenly they had to face a whole new world on how you go to school through a screen. A lot of my students, I was the only person that they would see that day and interact with, and I felt it was a lot of responsibility. I think it was hard, and it still is because it's lingering. We are little back, more in-person, but I think the mental health has been affected. The young generation likes to go out. They like social interaction. And it's been really, really hard."

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Dr. Sheri-Ann "Sheri" Pualani Daniels is the Executive Director of Papa Ola Lokahi where she has served since April of 2016. Sheri grew up in Pukalani, Maui before moving to Oʻahu to attend Kamehameha Schools Kapālama Campus from 7th to 12th grade. Sheri holds degrees in counseling psychology and has worked extensively in social service organizations across the state. One key issue Sheri tackled during the pandemic was data collection on Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPIs). At the helm of Papa Ola Lokahi, Sheri teamed up with numerous other community based organizations to disaggregate COVID-19 data collected on NHPIs with the goal of giving NHPIs a voice on policy, data, communication, and social support.

"I have four kids and my oldest at the time was a junior, and he had his senior year in COVID. So I think having him miss out on his junior prom and that whole socialization. And navigating school virtually, I think was interesting. And then I had two teenagers in high school, a middle schooler, and a fifth grader. So I think having all four of them at home, distance learning was a huge challenge and made me recognize that one, we have the space. We are very fortunate to have the ability to provide strong, good Internet and broadband, the equipment that my kids needed. But not everybody had that opportunities. So I think for me, it put in perspective that we were very fortunate that my kids had space to do homework. They could go outside and play if they needed a break. But not everybody had that, right. We know families who were all like literally on top of each other in a two bedroom apartment. So I think those things are really impactful because we have the means, but it still impacted us because I recognized that many don't. So how do you not feel a little guilty about that?"

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Dr. Scott Dallas Hoskinson, born in Missoula, Montana, moved to Maui in 1971 as a sophomore at Baldwin High School. His father was one of the first OBGYNs on Maui. He returned to Montana for undergraduate education and came back to Hawaiʻi to John A. Burns School of Medicine before completing residency in Denver, Colorado, in internal medicine. He later went on to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to specialize in infectious diseases and returned to Maui in 1988. When COVID19 arrived in Hawaiʻi, Dr. Hoskinson was working as an infectious disease consultant at a hospital while also consulting with patients. He describes rationing personal protective equipment, isolating from family as a health care practitioner, and how understandings of COVID19 evolved throughout the pandemic, and reflects on the public health lessons to be learned from this experience.

"And then, of course, our poor health care workers, once we finally developed increased capacity to test, we kept, oh my gosh, I have to hand it to all of our nurses and everybody else. We just went floor by floor, radiology, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy. We tested people over and over and over again because many of them were exposed over and over again, but also just because we knew asymptomatically the virus could be spread. And we really had no idea at any given moment who might have the infection and might be spreading it to their coworkers or to their patients. So we ended up testing the entire hospital population right down to all the custodians, maintenance people, everybody over and over again on a repetitive schedule. You can imagine the amount of money was spent doing that. Plus, everybody's nose was bleeding all the time. If you've ever had a nasopharyngeal swab, it's extremely unpleasant. And we tested those poor health care workers, some of them at least every week for three or four weeks in a row. But we rotated the entire hospital approximately every three weeks, testing all 1,000+ employees in the hospital. It was a nightmare."

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Carol Malina Kaulukukui, was born and raised in Kuliʻouʻou Valley on the island of Oʻahu. Malina attained her Master’s of Social Work (MSW) at Portland State University. During her time on the continental U.S., Malina worked at a day treatment center for people suffering from serious mental illness. At the day treatment center, Malina wrote and successfully received $1 million dollars from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to expand access to mental health services. Returning to Hawaiʻi, Malina served in the administrative arm of the Department of Health Adult Mental Health Division. After retirement, she began teaching hula as a healing activity for women experiencing substance abuse in prison. During the pandemic, Malina has been actively involved in the community as a Kumu Hula and Hoʻoponopono practitioner.

"I shut down in person hula somewhere in the spring of 2020 and then started Zooming. It was less than ideal, but not bad because what everybody wanted was connection, they wanted to connect. I mean, everybody was staying at home every day, but the Zoom hula was an opportunity for the haumana to come together and connect. And they were hungry. We were all hungry for that. So one of the things that happened with the hula class, and I think part of it because I'm a social worker, is that we would open with checking in, how are people today? And we would end with are there any announcements? And they would start talking story. Part of the checking in was having some haumana having some concerns about other family members. I remember one incident where there was an issue of potential suicidality. And it just so happens that one of my haumana works for the mental health clinic, and she is one of their suicide prevention trainers. So I had her do a 15 or 20 minute presentation about signs and symptoms of suicidality which was really helpful to the couple of people who were concerned about their family members. So we have that opportunity. The other thing we do in hula is we see ourselves as a community who can aid other communities. So every once in a while I say, OK, this month's tuition is going to go to Hawaiʻi Food Bank because I don't have as many expenses, right? I don't have expenses anymore except for paying rent, and so what happens is that the haumana will give me twice as much or more tuition because they know it's going to the food bank. And then six months later, I say, OK, this month's tuition is going to go to IHS. And so they send me more money, and I just send it off to IHS. So we're learning to be a community within the halau, and we are a community within the community. So we're just not a hula group coming together. You know, it's about connecting and connections. And I'm just really pleased about that."

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Born in 1955, Caroline Koa was born in Japan, raised in Florida, then returned to Japan at age 15 before moving to Hawaiʻi at age 21. A long-term substitute teacher for the Department of Education, Caroline quit during the pandemic to take care of her baby granddaughter. She reflections on the implications for education and childhood development, mental health, and the benefits of living on islands during the pandemic.

"We moved to this neighborhood the end of December, so we didn't really get a chance to meet any of our neighbors. But, we live in almost like a duplex situation where the home owner... we're renting, the home owner lives in the house right behind us. And so, he's not really like our landlord, he has a property management company dealing with all of the you know, rent and that kind of stuff. So in order, I guess, to keep it, you know, more of a professional basis. So when we first moved in it was just like, you know, greetings hello, whatnot, but then because of COVID, we kind of gotten to be a little bit closer to them where we kind of share goodies back and forth. Like if I have a little bit too much of something, then I share. When he goes to the store, his wife goes to the store, they often will bring us something like you know, a rotisserie chicken from Costco or you know, something like that. So they've been really, really good to us."

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David James Lam, PhD, was born in 1949 in Hong Kong, which was a British Crown Colony at the time. He attended high school in Vancouver, Canada, graduated with a BA from Stanford University, then attended the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where he earned his PhD in psychology in 1975. He worked in California and Hong Kong before coming back to Hawaiʻi in 1994. Retired from clinical practice, David continues to work part time as a consultant and has written several personal opinion pieces about mental health in the time of COVID-19. He and his wife reside in Mānoa.

"I think for me, the main thing is -- and that's something I've been talking to my family, my close friends and my colleagues about -- what each of us can do to create a better new normal. I am trying to find ways of convincing people -- find ways for myself, also -- of figuring out, each in our own way, what we can do to not just return to the way things were, but to have a better new normal going forward. And there are things that each of us can do that can help, either spread the word or specific actions that we can take."

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Thomas Lee holds a PhD in Epidemiology from UH Mānoa where he currently serves as an assistant professor. Thomas was born and raised on the island of Oʻahu where he currently resides. In addition to teaching at UH Mānoa, Dr. Lee serves as a U.S. Army Medical Officer. He was recruited to come aboard the Hawaiʻi Emergency Management Agency (HiEMA) in March 2020 to provide epidemiological models for the State of Hawaiʻi. His models were a critical resource for policymakers in determining when to reopen the state. From December 2020 to the time this interview was conducted in August, 2021, Thomas served with the U.S. Army Pacific assisting with medical planning and COVID-19 vaccinations.

"The first month was Monday through Friday, I got into Diamond Head around 7:00, 7:15, 7:20 AM. and didn't leave until about 5 PM. And it was nonstop meetings and or work. And I would get home. I would try to work out a little bit, have some family time, but it was very hard to shut off my brain because I would try to stay on top of what was going on in the community because a lot of what I was doing was so focused on the response. I still needed to have a situational awareness of what people were thinking, what was on the news, how people were perceiving the virus because that all impacted the messaging, because nothing with the response is in a silo. So really, there was no true break from COVID and the response from covid for a long time. And also we would have meetings on Saturday mornings, and I would just listen mainly to the other members of the ESF8 [Emergency Support Functions - Public Health and Medical Services], people in charge of hospitalization and long term care and PPE [Personal Protective Equipment]. But I would always need to be there because what I forecasted impacted everybody's response, so if they had questions, I would be able to answer it. So that was basically my typical week, Monday through Friday in Diamond Head, Saturday mornings on a call trying to balance as much as possible with family and exercise. But that was really what my life looked like. And not really going out because obviously things were close, and I was trying to lead a good example. Because if I'm not living what I'm preaching, then I can't expect people to follow the same rules."

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From Mililani, Oʻahu, Josh Lopez graduated from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2019 and was in the process of moving from Indianapolis to Chicago in 2020 when the pandemic hit. In early 2020 he changed jobs from being a systems analyst for United Airlines to working as a solutions engineer at Salesforce. In mid-March his work moved online and he returned home to Hawaiʻi before the state shut down. He reflects on traveling early in the pandemic, having family abroad during the pandemic, digital fatigue, changes in behavior around his neighborhood, and the importance of maintaining quality relationships through the pandemic.

"My friends here in Hawaiʻi, the communication hasn't changed as much because I'm still video chatting them anyway when I'm in Chicago. It's, it's different because I don't have as much physical hanging out time with, with friends whoever they are because of the, you know, the virus and social distancing. But it has changed the way that I interact with my friends a little bit..."

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State Representative Sylvia Luke was born in Korea in 1967 and immigrated to Hawaiʻi in 1977. She describes her educational journey from an interest in biology and genetics to civil service through her time as a senator at ASUH [Associated Students of University of Hawaiʻi] and the lasting friendships she made while serving in student government. She recounts her first political campaign in 1998 running for the State House and the various positions she has held on committees in the House. She describes the government response to COVID-19 with consideration to the State budget and setting up the unemployment claims center at the Hawaiʻi Convention Center. She reflects on lessons learned and imagines more resilient economic futures.

"So it was myself and chair Johanson, Chair Aaron Johanson and speaker Scott Saiki informed the governor that that we're going to go in and help the department. And basically we said we're not going to take no for an answer. We're just going to do it because it's not right that tens of thousands of people are not getting their unemployment checks. And so we helped set up a claims center at the convention center. And we work with the department heads and the various different entities and state employees. And just in three days, we set up over 200 computer stations at the convention center. And in order to accomplish that, that was just mind boggling because, you know, we were just so impressed that Office of Elections came in very quickly to provide us monitors and computers. Legislative offices, let us use computers and monitors, DAGS [Department of Accounting and General Services], Department of Transportation, when departments and state employees are called to do a certain thing for the purpose of doing achieving a result, they will do it. All they needed was direction, and all they needed was guidance on the time frame and what needed to be done. And very quickly, we were able to ramp up from just dozens of volunteers to over 200 volunteers. And in the early stages of assisting unemployment claims processing, the convention center stations and the Convention Center ballroom was filled with volunteers, all processing claims. And just in a few weeks, we were able to at least do the initial claims processing just so that individual information was correctly inputted in the computer."

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Born and raised in the Dominican Republic, Fary Maldonado spent his adolescence and early adulthood in Puerto Rico before joining the U.S. military at age 20. A PhD student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa at the time of the interview, Fary reflects on how COVID has affected his day-to-day life and navigating technology through the pandemic.

"So, I mean, it's going to sound weird, but I think that more as an individual now it's like everybody needs to pay more attention to their own lives and continue to get better personally. Because these things can happen at any given time and you need to have like a forté. You need to have a good foundation just in case this happens again or if it happens at a bigger scale. You have to look at. Well, you know, I guess, you have to support yourself. At least me, you know I'm looking from it from my perspective because I cannot look from other people's perspectives. But from my perspective, I need to continue to do good things and to get better as a person and to continue to develop good habits and get better at health and things like that."

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Laʻikū Morales, interviewed with his mother, Kealoha Fox, was a second grader at the time of the interview. He did a lot of art during the lockdown and shared his art during the interview. He reflects on his favorite art pieces and the transition to online learning. He talks about family, friends, and his activities during the pandemic.

JL: And then what else, your dad... Your dad works at the hospital, right?

LM: Yeah.

JL: So what... So when he gets home, what do you what do you do? You can't go hug him right?

LM: No. Well... can't really.

JL: Like right when he gets home your shouldn't...

LM: You can do a air hug.

JL: Yeah.

KF: Tell Jasmyne, or what do you do instead?

LM: [Shows fist bump].

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Kristine Qureshi, PhD, was born in New York City, New York on September 18, 1952. She grew up in a two bedroom apartment in the suburbs of New York along with her three siblings and two parents. Kristine earned her Bachelor's of Science in Nursing from Stony Brook University while raising her three children. She later earned her Master’s in Medical Surgical Nursing and received her Doctorate in Nursing Science at Columbia University. Kristine has focused her career on community based disaster preparedness. While in New York City, she served as an emergency room nurse at a public hospital that served John F. Kennedy Airport. At Columbia University, she worked on a team to create a center for public health preparedness in addition to adapting the Incident Command System for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). During the pandemic, she led the Community Care Outreach team for the Hawaiʻi Emergency Management Agency (HiEMA) to understand the impacts of COVID-19 on the health and welfare of the people of Hawaiʻi. Kristine also worked with the University of Hawaiʻi to establish a contact tracing team and set up several vaccine pods. In August of 2021, she retired from UH Mānoa where she served as the associate dean for research and global health.

"Now COVID 19 is in the State of Hawaiʻi, and they know that they want to do contact tracing. So the Department of Health came to the university and they said, 'We need a contact tracing training program put together, and we need it done very quickly.' And they came to us in May, and they wanted 400 people trained by July (laughs). So they came to me and said, 'You clearly know something about this. Can you do this?' I said, 'Actually, yes, because when I was an infection control nurse, I actually did contact tracing. So I've done it. And I know what it is.' So I put together a team. It wasn't just myself. These types of responses were always done in a team. And I think people really need to understand that. But I was the team leader, and we put together a curriculum that was really, I have to tell you, I'm very proud of it. It wasn't just your looking at a PowerPoint slide set and going through the thing. It's sort of like flat learning. We put together a synchronous meaning a live, but via Zoom training program it was eight hours of didactic. But in that didactic, every thirty minutes there was a breakout session and people would go into rooms of four people and discuss and come back and report back. So it was very interactive learning. And then they would come back the second day for a four hour live simulation via Zoom. And we got actors from the School of Theater Science, and they were trained on how to pretend they were, as an actor, they were a person who gets the phone call that your COVID-19 test has been positive and you need to go into isolation or quarantine or you've been exposed, and you need to go into isolation or quarantine. And we had four different scripts. The person who was accommodating, a person who was like angry, another person highly anxious, etc. And they were just wonderful. And the student learner, they were in groups of four, so each one took a turn making the call and getting the response. And then they had to think on their feet. And the actor improvised. So it was really very, very highly regarded."

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Born in Hong Kong, Nicole Tam moved to Hawaiʻi in 2007. As a child during the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, Nicole recalls daily temperature checks and living through the fear of an unknown virus. A graduate of UH Mānoa, Nicole was working as a reporter for KITV Island News when the pandemic first started. She reflects on covering COVID19, sifting through information, and the challenges of working as a reporter during the early stages of the pandemic.

"So actually, a friend of mine told me that his friend's uncle caught COVID, you know such a Hawaiʻi things right? So of course, as a journalist, you go to verify if he was indeed sick. So I called up this guy after this guy gave me his number, and then I listened to him on the phone and he kept talking, and I was like, “How old are you?” And he goes, 'I'm 84.' So I was like, oh my God, this 84 year old got COVID."

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