All right, you guys are ready?

Welcome to our committee meetings today's August fifth.

We will start off with our public safety and human services committee.

I'd like to call the order that the public safety and human services committee.

Item COW 2026-03 communication from Councilmember Holland requesting the presence of Alan Bennington Castro, Hawaii Health and Harm Reduction Center to provide a briefing relating to the closure of Malamapono and Kauai.

Move through Corry.

Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, I have been working with Hawaii Harm Reduction or Health and Harm Reduction Center on Oahu this year.

As part of my commitment to trying to address obviously the ongoing drug issues that we have here on Kauai.

And after meeting with them and learning about the closure of Malamapono, I believe in January, I felt that it was important that we just get a briefing and that all of you are also aware of the services that they're now providing.

And Heather is here to kind of share some of that with us.

So Heather, you can just join us here at the front.

And you just tap your microphone at the little circle there, and it'll allow you it'll go green.

And yeah, I'll just basically let you say one more thing before we jump in is that you know I've been working with them on some solutions.

I know we all were aware of the amount of needles that were recently found on the bike path.

Um in stuff like that, we have been talking and trying to partner with our parks team and them to discuss a possible pilot project of uh needle dispos depository boxes along that stretch of bathrooms to see if there's a certain amount of um you know disposal there that we see happening instead of our beaches.

And to me, if even if one third of the needles that would have ended up maybe sprawling in the park are instead dropped in those boxes, it's a win for safety in our community and possibly the protection of our Kiki in our park.

So to me it's worth it.

I just am trying to navigate some of those things, and they've been helping me with that.

Um but I just thought that the overall changes are important for all of you to understand.

So with that, I'll pass it over to you.

Thank you so much, Councilmember.

Um Aloha Kako, good morning.

I'm Heather Lask.

I'm a licensed clinical social worker, and I'm the executive director of the Hawaii Health and Harm Reduction Center.

My apologies for the confusion around my slides.

I really apologize.

Also, Alan is my assistant who I think that they signed him instead of me.

Um but I'll make sure that you get the slides afterward, and I think we're trying to um print them out.

Um so uh my remarks are really around um well, first of all, the Hawaii Health and Harm Reduction Center actually's had a 25-year presence on Kuwait, but just one um one staff member.

So I'm gonna share a bit about a little bit about our history, but more importantly, what we're doing now because of the sudden closure of Malamapono Health Services.

So we are a statewide organization that started in 1983 as the Life Foundation, um, and then we merged with the Chow Project, which is a statewide uh outreach um and linkage to drug treatment program, um, and we merged in 2018 to become the Hawaii Health and Harm Reduction Center.

But we have over 40 years of history in the islands, and as I mentioned, we've had a staff member here on Kauai for 25 years, Sheila Calketno.

And uh we work at the intersection of homelessness, substance use, mental health, chronic diseases like HIV and the criminal legal system.

And our whole effort is to, and our tagline is to reduce harm, promote health, create wellness, and fight stigma in Hawaii in the Pacific.

So we started as an HIV organization, um, but through our growth and through our clinical services, we now um on Oahu, and we're trying to replicate that here, have a fully functioning medical clinic that focuses on people living with HIV as well as sexual health wound care and a very growing addiction treatment and behavioral health program.

So when Malamapono closed in January, at the end of January, we were appropriate in all transparency.

We had been in talks with Malamapono because of their challenges of potentially merging with the organization.

Um but then the board decided to suddenly close at the end of January, and so literally on February 4th, um, we popped open to support people with HIV on the island.

As you probably know, they were the only organization funded to support people living with HIV.

Um so we support about 42 current individuals living with HIV on in Kauai, Kauai County.

Um and so then uh through uh coordination with the district health office.

Uh we luckily got to work with doctor before she retired, um, and now with Lauren and then with the um what the harm reduction services branched um part of the health department, they realized that they're um because their one employee who had been providing the sexual health services through the district health office retired in December, that there were no free sexual health, sexually transmitted infection or HIV screenings on the island.

So that's why with their support, um we were able to open up on February 1, and then on March 1, we invited another staff, um and we currently have three more openings.

Um so we'll have a total of seven at our clinic, which is at Kakui Grove.

We were blessed to have the opportunity, um, and I'm still hoping that I made the right decision, but I took a um I took a educated and heartfelt um guess, and we took over their space.

So I'm still trying to ensure that I have the resources to maintain that space.

But as any of you have known, and thank you so much, Councilmember, for coming and visiting us.

Wellamapono had just updated the clinical space to be the state of the art.

And so we're now able to operate out of that space.

We have a clinician every Wednesday.

I'm looking for a clinician on island until then I have one of mine from Oahu, and then we do telehealth the other five days with our staff on island, seeing folks on Oahu.

Our current services are for supporting people with HIV or any other infectious diseases.

Again, testing, which is low cost or free for all the sexually transmitted infections, HIV, hepatitis, and then we are doing seeing some of our transgender community as well.

What we hope to scale up to, and especially given what I'm hearing from all the meetings we've been having with Ho Lala Hui, the YWCA.

Today I'm meeting with the new executive director of KEO, as well as meeting with Judge Myers, which I'll mention why I'm doing that in a moment.

We're hearing that there's a big need for behavioral health.

So we would love if it's a good fit for the community with our services to expand and bring some of the services.

So we work with the homeless community, we run a Kau Hale on Oahu with 60 families, we treat addiction, and we have over 300 people in our treatment program, and we have a psychiatrist and address mental health.

Because you all know this.