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:

        a)    public and professional education;
        b)    development of professional and organizational healthcare capacity;
        c)    advocacy and public policy;
        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.”