Hawaii Health and Harm Reduction Center opens new Lihue office

Kauai residents again have a local place to get HIV testing, overdose-prevention support and gender-affirming care after the January closure of Malama Pono Health Services left the island without that longtime provider. Hawaii Health and Harm Reduction Center, Kauai opened its new office at 4370 Kukui Grove St., Suite 114, in Lihue, giving the island a local site for health and wellness resources that had been missing for months.

The center marked the opening with a Friday open house on June 5 that drew about 100 guests, including Mayor Derek S.K. Kawakami, Diane Felton of the state Department of Health and David Peters of Ho‘ola Lahui Hawaii. A traditional Hawaiian blessing set the tone for the gathering, which came just before the organization joined the 8th annual Kauai Pride Parade and Festival the next day. The move put the new office in front of the same communities it says it is trying to serve: transgender, LGBQ and Native Hawaiian residents, along with others affected by HIV, hepatitis, homelessness, substance use, mental illness and poverty.

At the new Lihue office, Hawaii Health and Harm Reduction Center said it will offer HIV and STI testing, HIV case management, overdose prevention services, gender-affirming health care and other wellness resources. Executive Director Heather Lusk said the office reflects a commitment to compassionate, stigma-free care and a continuation of service for Kauai residents. The center’s broader work includes HIV medical case management, syringe exchange, HIV and hepatitis C counseling and testing, wound care, PrEP and PEP, housing and homeless outreach, transgender care and social services, smoking cessation, LEAD services, monkeypox outreach and vaccination and a medical clinic.

The opening lands in a public-health picture that still shows need. The state Department of Health’s Harm Reduction Services Branch coordinates statewide efforts on viral hepatitis, HIV, sexually transmitted infections, opioid overdose prevention and LGBTQ+ health. Hawaii recorded 87 new HIV diagnoses in 2024. Through 2024, 5,175 Hawaii residents had ever been diagnosed with HIV, 3,640 had ever had an AIDS diagnosis and 2,511 had died. Kauai County had the lowest HIV diagnosis rate among the counties in the 2024 surveillance report, at 111.9 per 100,000 residents, but the statewide care continuum still showed gaps in getting people linked and retained in treatment.

The center’s role also extends beyond testing and clinic visits. The Hawai‘i Syringe Services Program says Hawaii Health and Harm Reduction Center exchanged 599,683 syringes statewide in 2023 and nearly 18 million from 1993 to 2023. Act 106 of 2025 removed the old one-for-one limit and now allows needs-based distribution. On Kauai, the new office builds on a long local pattern: Kauai County’s 2025 homelessness grant for Malama Pono and HHHRC outreach, and Malama Pono’s islandwide mobile health unit launched in 2017 to reach Westside patients who had trouble getting to Lihue.