 Hello and welcome to Connecting Hawaii Business on ThinkTech Hawaii. My name is Kathleen Lee, owner of Kathleen Lee Consulting, and I am your host for this program. We are currently live-streamed on ThinkTechHawaii.com as well as on ThinkTech's Facebook and YouTube pages. And for all our viewers out there, if you would like to send us questions during the show, you could email us at questions at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Before today, I am very pleased to have on the show one of my friends. Her name is Tricia Fatui and she is the Executive Director of Donor Development for the Hawaii market for March of Dimes. Welcome to the show, Tricia. Thanks for being on. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Of course. So let's launch into this, Tricia. Tell our viewers about yourself. Well, Alohaan, thank you again, Kathleen, for asking me to be here today. I'm Tricia Fatui, Executive Director of Donor Development with March of Dimes Hawaii. I had the pleasure of working with Kathleen when I was previously at the Chamber of Commerce Hawaii as Associate Vice President of Events and Engagement. And in my role at March of Dimes, I oversee all of our programs, our events, and advocacy initiatives for the state of Hawaii. And so I kind of fell into this line of work of fundraising. I always loved event planning. I started event planning when I was in college and I just loved it. And then when I joined the Queen's Health System back in 2012, I was working in the Philanthropy Department as a special events coordinator, and I just fell in love with fundraising events and the idea of being able to raise money to help people. And I kind of came up with the motto of saving the world one party at a time. And so it's really like my philosophy on fundraising. I think that's wonderful. And I'm glad that I met you through the Chamber of Commerce as well. And I knew you were really active in that. So I was very excited to learn that you had gone into the non-profit world. So before you go into how you got into your current position, could you give us a brief background of the March of Dimes? What is your mission statement? March of Dimes leads the fight for, sorry, the fight for, gosh, I just went blank. You threw me off in the talking point here, fight for the health of all moms and babies. And then so we tailor that to all moms and babies in the state of Hawaii. Sorry about that, Tricia. Thank you. Thank you for all the long. So let's go into it. Why did you decide to take on your current position? I know you've been doing very well in everything that you've endeavored. And I've seen you do that from the time that I've known you. So why the March of Dimes? It's a very intense mission. It's a very meaningful one. So let's go into that. Thank you. Yeah. Leaving the chamber was a very difficult decision. I just loved working for the chamber and helping and supporting our business community. But last year March of Dimes had approached me to join their mission to fight for the health of all moms and babies. And I just couldn't say no. I am a working mom. I do have two teenagers and last year the pandemic was just so difficult for all of us moms across the nation, you know, and we all had to pivot our work life and we had to pivot our kids' school life and maintain everyone's health and safety. And so it was just a lot of added stress on to already being a working mom was stressful. And then I also had a miscarriage last year. And so having a miscarriage in the middle of the pandemic, it was just it was a very difficult season. And so when I had the opportunity to join March of Dimes, it was an opportunity to turn my pain into purpose and to serve our community and to help boys, moms that have also had a rough couple of years. I love that. Let's pull up the first slide. So people will have an idea of the mission of the March of Dimes, which Trisha had already mentioned earlier. And I know you wanted to talk about preterm birth. So let's go into that. And for our think tech folks, let's show the next three slides. Yeah, thank you so much, Kathleen, for once again inviting me here and to think tech, you know, just for the opportunity to share a little bit more about March of Dimes and one of the topics that I wanted to share with everybody today was about prematurity. So we can go to the next slide. One out of 10 babies are actually born preterm in in the US and also in Hawaii. And so when you think about it, you know, you're like, one out of 10 doesn't seem that impactful, but it really is. We think about some of the other issue, you know, other issues that affect children nationwide, you know, one in 500 babies have diabetes or children have diabetes. One in 285 have cancer. One in 59 have like a was it sorry. There you go. Autism spectrum disorder and one out of 10. So even it's even a bigger impact are born preterm. And so last year and we can go to the next slide. Last year, Hawaii actually received a report card grade of a D for having healthy babies. And so it was just shocking to think that Hawaii is one of the health the best places to raise a family, but it's not necessary. The best place to like to birth a child. And so there's, you know, we're so passionate about our families here. It's like there's got to be more that we can do just to make sure that babies are born healthy and have the best possible start. And so we can go to the next slide. So some people think like, OK, what's the big deal about having a premature baby? And the problem is that babies born premature. They don't have enough time to develop in the womb. And so if they don't have enough time to develop in the womb, then it leads to long term health issues. So premature is the leading cause of baby death. It is a leading cause of development delays such as, I think, you know, with the heart, with the lung, with the brain and even stomach issues. And some of the long term health issues include asthma, cerebral palsy, mental retardation, visual and hearing impairment for health and growth and learning disabilities. You know, in Hawaii has a high, has a lot of people that have asthma issues. Hawaii has a lot of people that have, you know, special education needs. We have a huge special education, you know, here in our DOEs. And so I actually have a girlfriend that's a special education teacher. And she says that, you know, when she really drills down, some of her students are were actually premature babies. They are like, oh, OK, that, you know, that makes sense. When you have a premature baby, it's also increased risk of ADHD and increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome. And so the list goes on and on. And you don't realize that all these things could happen, you know, once you have a baby that's born too early. And so we can go to the next slide. So the cost of having a premature baby is even more staggering. So the societal cost of Hawaii is about $94 million a year. And so when you break that down to like local businesses. So in Hawaii, we have such great health care, right? Like all the if you work 20 hours or more, you have health care. And so for a local business, when they provide health care for their employees, if their employee has a healthy baby, then the employer cost is about $8,000 a year. But if the employer, if the same employee has a healthy as it has a premature baby, then the cost of the business is $65,000 a year. So there's definitely an invested interest for businesses, you know, for the community, for everybody to make sure that one, we have healthy babies because it helps us financially, but also it helps us set up our society for the future so that our people and our community are helping. Tricia, just if you can go over that real quick, because that's a that's a huge difference between having like a preterm baby and like a healthy baby. So where are the costs coming from? Is it mostly through medical bills or? Yeah, a lot of it is medical because when a baby is born premature, a lot of times they have to stay in the NICU for a certain amount of time before they can be discharged from the hospital. So like the average stay in the NICU is about six weeks. But some babies are in the NICU for six months or up to a year. So that's all the daily hospital costs of being in the hospital. Then you have all the specialized care, the medicine, the equipment, the nurses. And then it's also lost lost productivity for the for the parents, right? Because now the parents are leaving their work to be at the hospital for long, you know, term, long times to be with the baby by the bedside. So it's a little bit combination of both as a high cost, you know, of hospital care, education and then also the lack of productivity. And thank you for pointing that out to so people, especially, you know, the businesses and employers out there are aware of it. Wanted to share a story or, you know, talk about neighbor island families and how preterm births affect them. So could you go into that, Trisha? Yeah, if you want to bring up the next slide as well. And so also for neighbor island families like this, the disparities are even more shocking. So, you know, we all know that on Oahu, we have the wonderful hospital Coppulani Medical Center. It is only level three hospital for mom and baby care across the state. So families on the neighbor island, if they do have a high risk pregnancy or have an emergency delivery and it's a preterm, then they have to fly over to Oahu for that care. So there's no place on the neighbor islands for them to get that care. And so there are some babies, so if you say you live on the big island and you have a high risk pregnancy, some families are moving to Oahu for the last three months so that they can be close to the hospital. Now, if you don't have the luxury to up, you know, move your family over and you stay on the big island, then you end up delivering on the big island. They have a hospital, you know, physician shortage. And so you might end up not getting the care that you need so that baby is healthy and that mom is healthy. So there's more complications that arise. So there was a story about a couple of years ago that one mom had a C-section and there was complications with that C-section and she ended up leading to death because there was there was a shortage of blood supply on the big island. So it's crazy to think that in this day and age with all of our technology and all of our advances that we still have moms that are losing their lives, delivering birth because of lack of resources. And so, you know, we're just like all hands on deck. You know, I know COVID is huge right now, but at the same time, we can't forget about our moms and babies and just the basics of being able to have a healthy baby. Thank you for bringing that to our attention, Tricia, because I didn't even know that. So we are going to go on break, but when we come back, I would love for you to talk about how March of Dines is helping in advocacy for mothers and babies and upcoming programs or initiatives that you guys have. So yeah, stay tuned. We'll be on break. We'll be right back. State of clean energy. I think that Hawaii. Hawaii, the state of clean energy is about following the many clean energy initiative in Hawaii. Hawaii, the state of clean energy, appears weekly on Think Tech Hawaii at 4 p.m. on Wednesday. Thank you so much for watching our show. We'll see you then. Aloha. Welcome back to Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech Hawaii. My name is Kathleen Lee, and our guest for today is Tricia Fatui. She is the executive director for donor development for the Hawaii market for March of Dines. And March of Dines does they do advocacy for healthy mothers and babies. Tricia, I hope I got that right. Healthy mothers and babies. So the last time that we the last that we laugh, Tricia had talked about how free term birth affect people not only in Oahu, but on the neighbor islands as well and how it affects the businesses. So Tricia, let's delve into what March of Dines is doing as far as initiatives and programs go. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Kathleen, for for being here again. If we would like to put that, yes, thank you for the slide. And so, like I said earlier, that all of these issues has really inspired our local office to to make a difference for our families and to put together some new programs to increase positive outcomes for moms and babies. And so since February, we have launched a whole bunch of new programs. So one of them is our COVID webinar series. So last month, we held our first one and it was really targeted on just providing awareness and education about the COVID vaccine for pregnant moms, for breastfeeding moms and talking about the safety and explaining all the information. So it was a big success. And so we are moving forward to doing additional webinars. September, October, November, and December. And we're just focused on educating moms of all demographics, working moms, staying at home moms, ethnic backgrounds statewide, just so they understand the benefits and the risks of COVID and the vaccine so they can make well informed decisions. The topics include the vaccine, prematurity, infant loss and the future motherhood. So more information, you can visit us on Facebook, March of Dines Hawaii for more information on that. Also in 2022, we're going to launch our education and series and support groups. And so we're going to do monthly support groups for working moms and new moms and postpartum and also doing education classes, such as becoming a mom, childbirth and pregnancy classes and more. And so one of the additional things we launched was our WIP board. So this is a group of young women leaders who want to help and get involved. We also launched that, Tricia, I did. Surprise, surprise, I launched a young professionals board. And I did recruit some Chamber of Commerce young professionals to join the WIP board. So we're all in this together. Very awesome. And you're one of the four members for that. Yes. So if you know of any young women that would like to join or men, they can be dads as well. We have the young professionals board. OK. And then we also have our NICU family support program, which supports Kapilani Hospital and their NICU. And it provides education for families, education for staff and then also support for parents. So when a baby is in the NICU, the baby is the patient and the parent is just kind of like a visitor. So all the care goes towards the baby. But the parent, you know, baby is helpless, so the parent has to be there. So we have a NICU family support coordinator that helps with the parents, provide emotional support, education. And then we're also launching to turn that NICU family support coordinator into a neighbor island patient navigator so that when families do travel from a walk from neighbor islands to Oahu, they have a patient navigator that can help them navigate. OK, where in the hospital? This is a huge hospital. Where am I supposed to go? How do I get a rental car, a car or a car seat? You know, all those different things. So we're really excited about that. We're also working for the Big Island specifically to increase quality of prenatal care for families on the Big Island with potentially a mobile health ban. And so it'll be a mobile health ban and we want to make it special for Big Island families or for Big Island because it is so rural and we're planning to have like big monster trucks and like a grill so it can go off roading in the dirt roads and really help those families that, you know, maybe have transportation issues or that just live in very rural settings. And let's see what else we're doing. So I have a ton of things up there. What do you think? I think you so you already went over the neighbor island initiatives. What about the Storks Nest program and our partnering with the Am I Home program? You can go ahead. So Storks Nest is a program that March of Dimes has nationally and it's to it's to like motivate women to go to their prenatal care appointments. And it's a shopping card program. So they get a card and every time they go to a class, they get a stamp. Once they fill out that card, then there's a closet that they can shop and they can get, you know, baby blankets, diapers. So it's fun like who doesn't love a shopping program. And so this one, the Storks Nest, we are partnering with Tripler Hospital and a local sorority here, Zeta Phi Beta, and we want to help military families because military families, you think living on an island, having a baby is hard. But living on an island away from your friends and family and your whole entire support group is even harder. So we're working on doing that for military families. I'm really excited. And then lastly, the My Home program. So my home program is the brain child of Dr. Menjili and she's also serves on our board and they help houseless families with a prenatal care. So we've been helping them with a diaper drive with donating used clothes, gently used clothing for those families. So we're super excited just to partner with more community partners and just, you know, serve and love the community more. Thanks, Tricia, that those are a lot of programs. And I'm glad that you are keeping busy and, you know, with every single program, there is a like a purpose to it. So I hope that the community knows about that when when they watch this and just like everyone else, whether it's a business or a nonprofit or even as individuals, I know you run into some challenges. So what are some of those challenges that you have encountered so far? You know, our biggest challenge is COVID. It just won't go away. It's a fundraising challenge because we were having to pivot our fundraising events, which funds all of these programs and initiatives. So we're supposed to have our annual Gala this November and we're tentatively pushing it back, postponing it to spring of next year. You know, with the the mayor's orders that came out this week, that was really unfortunate. You know, obviously, everyone's health and safety is number one. And then also it's a challenge for our mamas, you know, like when you're pregnant and you have to go to your doctor's office, now the doctor's offices are changing the visitor role. So you can't bring people with you. So if you are a pregnant mom and you have small children at home, now you're like, well, I can't leave my small children at home and I don't want to expose them to COVID. So I'm just not going to go to the doctors. And now moms are not getting the prenatal care that they need, which snowballs and like, OK, they might have premature birth, they might have birth defects. So we really want COVID to go away so that we can help help our families. Well, so how can people with the viewers that are out there and the community members that are tuning in, how can they help out? We would greatly appreciate the community support to follow us on Facebook at March of Dimes, Hawaii and also to visit our website, marchofdimes.org. We have lots of free resources and information and also encourage if you know anyone that's pregnant, encourage them to go to the doctors to know their rights, take the time off of work, you know, and make it a priority to get their doctor visits. We also would greatly appreciate volunteering. So volunteer on our young professionals board. We did launch a Neighbor Islands Council as well. So if you live or work on the Neighbor Islands or interested in joining volunteer as guest speakers for our webinar series or even volunteering in our office, you know, we're a small team. We only have about three people in our office. So we do have lots of like filing and organizing projects. So if anyone's interested and then also obviously a donation, you know, donating a gift of your time, talent or treasure, will definitely help us to go a long way. Thanks, Trisha, and we have a couple more minutes. So I want to tie this back into why you are doing this. Why is this work meaningful to you? You know, I think going back to just my personal experience as being a working mom and the challenges that we face and having a miscarriage last year. And I love I wasn't I'm not originally from Hawaii, you know, I'm from California and but I have spent majority of my adulthood in Hawaii and I just love this community. So much and I love our families and we just want to make sure that families have the best possible starts to a successful future. You know, living in Hawaii is one of the most beautiful places in the world to live, but it does present a lot of challenges. We all know how expensive housing is, you know, the job opportunities. You know, there's a lot of challenges that living on an island presents. And so if we have unhealthy babies on top of that, then makes our society even harder to to succeed. And so we just want to make sure that babies have the best possible start and that are healthy. And so that our community community can continue to grow and thrive. You know, and I obviously have a best interest. I have two teenagers. So one day they're going to be parents and just want to make sure that we have great doctors and physicians and technology and systems so that I have I can have healthy grand babies. That's like, wait, that's way too crazy, even say that right now. I'm like, no, my son's 15. So I do not want to think about grand babies for at least 20 years to think about the future. Is there anything else that you would like to add? I just want to say, thank you, Kathleen. Thank you so much for your friendship and for this opportunity just to get our message out there to the masses. And I just I just really appreciate you on this time. Awesome. Let's pull up that last slide. If people would like to get a hold of you, Tricia Petui, how do they go out and doing that? You can email me at pfetuiatmarchofdimes.org or you can visit our website at www.marchofdimes.org. Thank you, Tricia again. And I am grateful for you, for, you know, educating reviewers and for your friendship as well and for coming on the show, even though we had some technical difficulties in the beginning. I appreciate you for that. And thank you to the folks at Things at Kauai as well and to J. Fidel for making shows like this possible. We had Michael helping us out today. So thank you, Michael. And thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Until next time, aloha.