University of Hawai`i John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) Dean Jerris Hedges, MD was in Washington, D.C. this week to meet with members of Hawai`i’s Congressional Delegation.
Dr. Hedges met with U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye and many of his staff, in between the Senator’s extremely busy schedule chairing hearings of the Senate’s Appropriations Committee. Dr. Hedges briefed the Senator on the status of the medical school, the progress of the University of Hawai`i Cancer Center, the Early Acceptance Program for High School students from Hawai`i that the Chancellor and Manoa Office of Student Affairs helped develop, and the Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) activities at JABSOM.
Dean Hedges and US Rep. Mazie Hirono on Capitol Hill. (Hirono photo.)
The dean also met with U.S. Representatives Colleen Hanabusa and Mazie Hirono, to update them as well about the important RCMI activities at JABSOM. (The programs are now under the National Institute of Minority Health & Health Disparities). “Both Rep. Hirono and Rep. Hanabusa were gracious of their time,” said the Dean.
The offices of Senator Inouye, Representative Hirono, and Rep. Hanabusa “Tweeted” about their encounters with the Dean, along photographs of Hirono and Hedges and Inouye and Hedges. When they did, their official “Tweets” also appeared on C-SPAN, announcing to the world watching on cable TV that our Dean (and Hawai`i’s members of Congress) were hard at work helping the medical school grow more local doctors and expand research into health issues which matter most to residents of Hawai`i and the Pacific Region.