Through the years, I’ve lost a dozen family members to cancer.
There was my 3-year-old cousin Kaleo, stuck in a hospital, dying of neuroblastoma, not getting to live his full life. Then my Aunty Linda, diagnosed with breast cancer when she was my current age. Then my Aunty AJ, screaming in pain with endometrial cancer, my dad holding her hand as she died in my granny's house. My uncle, who recently died from metastatic prostate cancer. 

My widowed aunt once told me she knew living on Maui meant compromising their health because our rural communities just don’t have many healthcare resources. 

Looking back, it’s no surprise that, as a kid, I thought cancer was an inevitable part of being Native Hawaiian. It wasn’t until I moved to the continent for college (and ultimately medical school) that I realized it didn’t have to be that way. I’ll never forget the day in graduate school, when I heard one of my mentors tell a patient with prostate cancer, “We can cure this.”

It changed everything I thought I knew about cancer and started me on the path to medical school.

If that experience set me on the path to becoming a physician-scientist, organizations like Conquer Cancer have fueled my journey. The support I received from Conquer Cancer played such an important role in advancing my career and helping me pursue the goal that motivated me to become a doctor in the first place: to bring better cancer care back to Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities like my own.

That’s why on Conquer Cancer Day (May 1), I’m asking people to make a gift to Conquer Cancer. Every patient, no matter where they live, deserves the care they need to survive cancer. And every dedicated physician-scientist deserves a Conquer Cancer in their corner—a place that will see the promise and hope their research holds for patients and does everything possible to help them turn research into reality.  

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