Coordinated Prevention

Jinan Banna is passionate about shifting the focus of our healthcare system to prevention rather than the treatment of health conditions.

On this topic, she presented a poster at the Hawaiʻi Agriculture Conference, “Mapping community assets to establish a local coordinated system of care to prevent childhood obesity.”

Her research seeks to understand how to better link clinical and community resources to support a healthy weight in children and is performed in collaboration with Albie Miles at UH West Oʻahu and researchers in Alaska and Montana.

The long-term goal of this community-engaged project is to improve equity in childhood obesity outcomes among low-income, underserved populations by creating and evaluating an integrated clinical-community system of care that is based on community assets.

“I am truly committed to promoting the health of underserved communities that suffer disproportionately from obesity and related chronic conditions and am proud to be able to serve,” she says.