Martina L. Kamaka

Colleagues credit Dr. Martina Kamaka with being at the forefront of patient-centered care and cultural competency training of medical students well before these were goals of health care. A colleague speaks of her “dreaming, developing and delivering cultural relevant and sensitive education” for 23 years in the area of Cultural Competency (CC) in JABSOM’s Native Hawaiian Center of Excellence. Dr. Kamaka recognizes learning as experiential and occurring in diverse settings and unexpected contexts. In her experience, learning is balanced between mind, body, and spirit at the micro level, and between communities/families, environment, and spiritual sources of strength at the macro level. She expresses that the “most important point is for students who are future physicians to be able to communicate with patients with our hearts and our naʻau.” A medical student who graduated in 2022 speaks to how Dr. Kamaka has been “a big part of my journey in influencing the way I see myself, my relationship to the community, and to my profession.”