About Community First
Vision
A Hawaiʻi Island where we embrace our kuleana for our own health and the well-being of others.
Mission
Community First convenes stakeholders, providers and policy makers to drive initiatives to improve the health of our community.
The late Barry Taniguchi, the third-generation executive of the family-owned KTA Super Stores and a pillar of the Hawaiʻi Island community, founded Community First with three guiding principles:
Only Together
There is no way to transform healthcare & achieve a sustainable system without coming together. If all districts of the island come together, we can build a County-wide system of health governed by each community to best address their needs while leveraging information technology and payment models which require scale.
Make the Invisible, Visible
Barry would often recall his son Toby saying, “We value harmony more than truth.” Sometimes for the sake of harmony we make the visible invisible in order to get along. But in the long term, harmony can only come from truth so we must make the invisible, visible. Truth is the basis of the trust needed for collaboration and transformation.
Try, and don’t expect to get it right the first time
We need to act, recognizing that we can’t figure it all out through the creation of binders of plans, and that we will need to make adjustments as we move forward. But we will make these adjustments collaboratively and in the best interests of the community. Only by acting can we innovate.