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.
Our mission is: “To weave a lei of community support so that Hawai‘i’s people may die in the place of their choice, free of pain and suffering, and treated according to their beliefs and values.”