The Wahiawa Center for Community Health (WCCH) is working hard to set a foundation to bring affordable, high-quality and accessible health care to the people of Wahiawa.

WCCH exists as a direct result of a vision first held by the late U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye, who wanted to ensure that this geographically isolated area was adequately served.

Wahiawa’s service area is designated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a "rural" community, and is federally designated as a Medically Underserved Population (MUP).

The MUP designation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is a clear demonstration of an inadequate amount of primary care clinicians and the area’s poor socio-economic indicators.

Additionally, Hawaii’s Department of Health is working to designate the Wahiawa-Waialua areas as Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSA).

Individuals living in these areas have demonstrated increased overutilization of costly emergency room services and are in greater need of multidisciplinary care team approaches, which ultimately save third-party payers hundreds of thousands of dollars through decreased use of unnecessary services.

In Wahiawa, limited access and availability of health care are increasing at a rapid pace. To further exacerbate the dilemma, state Rep. Marcus Oshiro’s recent effort to determine current data on the homeless in Wahiawa has gleaned an increase in the homeless migrant population from sweeps being conducted in metropolitan Oahu.

Wahiawa’s limited number of physicians are at capacity, nearing retirement age and are not accepting new patients.

Furthering the burden: It was recently reported that the financially strapped Wahiawa General Hospital was forced to restructure its family medicine residency program, cancel its home health and physical therapy outpatient programs and reduce staffing.

At the forefront of WCCH’s objectives is the purchase of a potential site for the clinic at the Wahiawa Medical Building in the middle of Wahiawa.

Completion of the 5,700-square -foot facility would create the Wahiawa area’s first comprehensive health care provider and the area’s only clinical provider truly accessible by all, particularly individuals such as the uninsured or underinsured, those at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, and others facing care barriers like geography and culture.

WCCH has begun the process for a USDA Community Facilities Direct Loan and Grant Program by officially receiving USDA designation as a qualified rural community facility that entitles it to a 38-year loan and other grants.

Upon award, the loan and grants would allow WCCH to purchase the site for the medical clinic and begin implementation of vitally needed comprehensive health care services.

WCCH also plans to seek additional funding resources — for renovations and upgrades to the 40-year-old Wahiawa Medical Building — from private foundations, Hawaii’s Legislature and from HPSA as a federally qualified health center along with Medicaid-enhanced payments.

For residents and businesses in Wahiawa’s service area, the projected fruition of a fully operational federally qualified health center would include a multidisciplinary team approach that includes primary care (including pediatrics and OB/GYN), behavioral health, oral health care, care coordination and on-site pharmacy services.

These are exciting times for Wahiawa and its service area, representing an excellent opportunity to significantly improve the health care of our rural and medically underserved population along with economic growth via a new health center.

The Wahiawa Center for Community Health will not only improve the health status of this rural and medically underserved population, but also realize a significant decrease in the burden of insurance costs through lowered emergency room utilization, fewer hospital admissions and, most important, fewer readmissions into the hospital system, thereby protecting our community’s cherished historic asset, Wahiawa General Hospital.