The History of ‘Ohana Nui’: Transformation of the Hawaii Department of Human Services

Hawaii has launched a dramatic new approach to the delivery of human services called Ohana Nui seeking to break generational patterns of poverty by concurrently addressing all of the basic health and human services needs of the entire family, rather than doing so in a piece-meal fashion. ‘Ohana Nui, being led by the State Department of Human Services (DHS), is the Hawai‘i model of the national two-generation (2Gen) approach advocated by Ascend at the Aspen Institute. Bringing together Hawaii’s Departments of Human Services and Health, along with their community partners, Ohana Nui aims to build a comprehensive, integrated, statewide, one-stop system to provide support for Hawaii’s most vulnerable individuals and families.