The future of the University of Hawaii Cancer Center is now at a critical juncture.

The center needs the support of all of us — the university, the Legislature and the community at large — to fully achieve its mission as the only institution in the state dedicated to making life-saving discoveries in cancer.

The Cancer Center is facing a financial crisis brought about by a series of budget shortfalls, caused in part by less funding due to dwindling revenues from the state’s cigarette tax and a nearly $8 million annual mortgage payment tied to its state-of-the-art facility in Kakaako.

Various plans to reduce its debt have been proposed, but none is a quick fix or the proverbial silver bullet.

At this point in the legislative session, we need to focus on ensuring that the center continues to save lives and remains a vibrant part of our strategic vision for long-term economic sustainability.

Let’s look first at the value of the Cancer Center in a way that’s virtually impossible to quantify: lives saved.

Many people in Hawaii have been touched in some way by this devastating disease. In our state, five people die of cancer each day and 6,000 are diagnosed with cancer every year. The statistics are staggering: Among Asian-Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, cancer leads the list of fatal diseases, accounting for 27 percent of all deaths.

Over the past 40 years, our Cancer Center has been an integral part of the community, conducting research on our state’s diverse population, exploring why and how various cancers affect different ethnic populations and providing cutting-edge cancer treatments through the National Cancer Institute (NCI) clinical trials program. Its NCI designation places the center in an elite class: one of only 69 of the 1,600 cancer centers in the nation that hold this recognition.

There’s little doubt that having this prestigious designation not only brings groundbreaking studies and new cancer-fighting drugs and treatment to our community but adds to the stature of the university and the John A. Burns School of Medicine. And for individuals fighting cancer, being able to be treated at home rather than on the mainland saves money and provides the opportunity for invaluable emotional support from families and extended ohana.

Well aware that we can’t rely on a consistent, long-term revenue stream generated by tourism or by our military installations, nearly every strategic development plan in the state acknowledges the critical need for economic diversity.

The UH Cancer Center is a perfect fit for the business model these plans recommend because it meets and exceeds the criteria of creating good-paying jobs in the areas of advanced technology, medicine, medical research and testing, and health care, adding nearly $20 million a year to the local economy through payroll and operations spending alone.

Having a cancer center of this caliber is a powerful recruiting tool to attract cancer-care providers, not the least of whom are our own local medical school graduates who either want to stay in Hawaii to practice medicine or have their sights set on returning home after schooling on the mainland.

Likewise, we’re fortunate to have a number of world-renowned scientists working at the Cancer Center. We stand to lose them to other institutions if our center does not remain a venue where researchers throughout the state, the mainland and the world can come together to meet and discuss different aspects of cancer’s etiology as well as innovative treatments to save lives and improve the quality of life for patients.

Last fiscal year, the center added more than $54 million to Oahu’s economy. We cannot afford to abandon this long-term strategic investment that saves precious lives and greatly benefits our state’s economy.

We all stand to benefit from the UH Cancer Center’s success. It’s part of our vision for our future and it is our kuleana to make it work.