Testimony Regarding the Importance of Expanding the Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i
University of Hawai'i President Evan S. Dobelle
Good morning Senator Inouye, Senator Akaka, and distinguished members of this committee. My name is Evan Dobelle and I have the privilege of serving as President of the University of Hawai'i, a ten-campus public university system that serves 80,000 students and has an annual expenditure budget of nearly $1 billion.
I am here this morning to provide testimony on the construction of the University’s new Cancer Research Center, a state of the art facility that will have a profound impact on this country’s ability to fight this deadly disease. The building of this new center should be of primary interest to the nation because Hawai'i provides a unique environment in which to conduct cutting edge research that will dramatically aid the fight in developing a cure to cancer.
Let me start by putting this topic into a broader context. Every year over 1 million people in the United States are diagnosed with cancer. Last year alone the costs associated with fighting cancer in the US were approximately $190 billion. This is a tremendous economic burden on our country as a whole and the individual citizens and their families who battle this horrible disease. One of the challenges this nation faces is how to effectively develop proper treatment care for those who live with cancer, and more importantly, how we can best find a cure.
Statistics show cancer is the second leading cause of death in the state of Hawai'i as well as our nation, and it is the #1 killer among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. There are over 12.5 million Asian Americans currently living in the United States making them one of the largest ethnic groups in the country and the fastest growing minority.
Why is it important that we consider race and ethnicity in our testimony this morning? The reason is differences exist in the incidence of cancer by race and ethnicity, but yet our country’s approach to investigating cancer thus far has been insensitive to that fact. The reality is research can only be enhanced when race and ethnicity are taken into account, and it will help our government better formulate national health strategies relevant to the entire population of our country.
Hawai'i being home to the most ethnically diverse population in the United States, it provides an ideal environment in which to investigate the causes and study the reasons behind this insidious disease. Examining a variety of racial and ethnic groups in a community such as in Hawai'i, where there is not a dominant ethnicity, will assist researchers in learning how genes, diet, environmental factors, culture and behavior affect cancer. This opportunity can only be found in Hawai'i because the diversity that exists can not be replicated anywhere in the world.
The cancer experience among ethnic and racial groups varies widely across the world as well as here in the United States. The differences between groups may be related to a variety of factors including biology, heredity, environmental factors and behavior. It is critical to identify clues to cancer causation as well as ways of detecting these cancers early, treating them, and ultimately, preventing them. It also helps take into account differences in socio-economic status, education, and access to healthcare affecting cancer diagnosis and treatment throughout the world.
It is also important to recognize our state has the largest proportion of ethnically mixed individuals in the country. More than 50% of all marriages in Hawai'i are considered ethnically or racially mixed. This makes Hawai'i a vanguard of the US population of tomorrow, thus understanding the health disparities that exist in Hawai'i today is of critical importance to the rest of the nation and the world.
In addition to all these unique cultural aspects, Hawaii is also home to the US Pacific Command, a unified command of all four branches of the military in the Asia-Pacific region. USPACOM oversees more than 300,000 military men and women, which represents 20 percent of all active duty personnel. With many of these soldiers deployed into remote foreign locales, they often face unknown health risks that contribute to a variety of illnesses, including cancer. Given that, it is critical to the health of our men and women in uniform in the Pacific that they have access to world class care for all diseases. Our new facility can provide that to our military.
The Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i (CRCH) has been the only National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center in the Pacific region for more than 25 years. Thus it is strategically located to identify the lifestyle and genetic factors that contribute to cancer risk, to evaluate safe cancer therapies for ethnic group patients, and to design prevention programs that are culturally and socially appropriate. The Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i has a long history of committed faculty members who have dedicated their careers to studying the striking variations in cancer incidence and survival among ethnic populations in Hawai'i. This year alone CRCH faculty generated over $30 million in extramural research funds validating the importance of continued research of cancer patterns among ethnic populations.
Although the Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i excels as a research unit conducting basic scientific research, population studies, education and community outreach to identify and communicate the causes and cures for cancer, it does not currently perform patient diagnosis and treatment. Incorporating direct patient care and putting research into practice will significantly enhance both innovation and research advancements. The location and diversity of CRCH offers our country an unprecedented opportunity to move beyond simply researching the disease and into clinical cancer care as it relates to ethnic populations and all people. With the addition of a clinical component, the CRCH would achieve the designation of a comprehensive cancer center by NCI.
CRCH has excelled in studying the development of cancer but the time is here to accelerate the benefits of our research and put them into practice with an extraordinary physical structure. A new and expanded CRCH facility would allow for offering clinical trials with new drugs accelerating the pace of new discoveries thus leading to an ever-higher survival rate for cancer victims. Physically combined into our biotechnology complex in the Honolulu neighborhood of Kaka’ako with our John A. Burns School of Medicine and private industry, Hawai'i can truly develop a powerful and sustaining biotech industry, which only helps diversify our state’s economy. This all fits in with the dominant recommendation from the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Panel that calls for the establishment of a state-of-the-art multidisciplinary outpatient cancer care facility run by the UH Cancer Research Center in close cooperation with existing health care facilities.
We have the knowledge that must now be translated into practice through clinical application, thus providing valuable and currently unavailable information for the nation on cancer in minority populations. The State of Hawai'i offers the only opportunity to successfully accomplish this in our country.
Why should the Congress support such a project in the middle of the Pacific? Simply put: It is in the nation’s best interest to do so. The benefits of cancer research in Hawai'i are limitless but we can only continue to progress and truly benefit society if we translate our science into practice by conducting cancer research as it directly relates to patient’s disease. A new state-of-the-art facility located in Honolulu offers cancer researchers across the world that opportunity. This in not a project that just has impact on a local population; rather the research and care that happens here will have dramatic ripple effects throughout the entire global medical community. We already have strong partnerships with universities in Japan and Guam as well as mainland collaborations with the National Institutes of Health, the University of California System and Vanderbilt University.
This program is particularly significant in an age where large numbers of our military will be fighting a global war on terrorism for many years to come. As we continue to send young men and women off to protect democratic values in very different cultures that expose them to potentially complicated health environments, we are obligated to provide them cutting edge health related research and progressive public health policies that properly ensure they will be cared for. With lessons that we are still learning from agent orange in Vietnam and from the Gulf War Syndrome, we must take what history has shown us from modern day combat and ensure our troops be protected by dedicating significant resources in our national health care infrastructure. A major investment in the Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i would be an extraordinary step in that direction.
Thank you again for your time this morning and for your consideration of this important facility. Simply put, a strong Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i means that essential clues in this collaborative effort to fight cancer will be unlocked and it will help in controlling cancer in all Americans.
