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Three Burning Questions with Luke Hasty, Hawaii
Say "Aloha!" to Luke Hasty, STD Program Manager for the State of Hawaii.
What do you love most about working in STD prevention?
STD prevention deals with complicated, personal issues of significant concern for individual- and population-level health, impacting all ages in most segments of society. There are many kinds of problems to solve or ameliorate in this public health specialty, so there is something for everyone’s interests. What I find most satisfying about this work is the ability to make direct, positive impacts to the lives of others, over a variety of circumstances and using a variety of approaches.
What I find most satisfying about this work is the ability to make direct, positive impacts to the lives of others
Luke Hasty, HIWhat do you think are the biggest challenges facing our field?
That there are many kinds of problems to solve or ameliorate! The biggest (generalized) challenge for many of us is that our responsibilities have grown more than the resources that we can directly apply in response, so we face hard decisions about how to use what we have to the best effect. There are ways in which we must do more and do more differently. The good news is that we have motivated, helpful, traditional partners to work with and increasing numbers of new allies.
Hawaii Department of Health
When you’re not working, what’s your favorite thing to do with your free time?
One of the ways in which I’m lucky is that I have two elementary-school-aged daughters, and they give me a lot of chances to have fun. As a school assignment, one has been designing and building her own model of a Polynesian voyaging canoe—not life-sized (!), but small and light enough to easily carry and pass-around a classroom. She’s done great with dioramas, solar ovens, computer programming, and many other fun projects. My other daughter enjoys singing, drawing, dancing, swimming, skating, biking—things I can’t do or can’t do as much as she can. My wife, mother, and others help if I can’t keep up, or if I can’t keep up well enough!
Dr. Hasty’s Bio:
Luke manages the STD prevention program in the Harm Reduction Services Branch of the State of Hawaii Department of Health (DOH; both a state and local public health agency), where he gets a lot of support from very talented and dedicated colleagues. Prior to that, he worked in DOH’s general communicable diseases program, including several years on the island of Kauai. Kauai was a great place for his first experience working in public health. Luke came to public health work through family connections–his wife is a public health epidemiologist–after many years in university positions as a full-time researcher or instructor, and as a person who enjoyed being a graduate student. About half of his former research work involved field ecology and half laboratory science; about half on vertebrates and half on invertebrates. Included in the mix was learning about and contributing to work on reconstructing the evolution of ‘host-parasite’ associations. This was probably the most “health-related” aspect of his first professional life, other than teaching human genetics and physiology. He lives in ‘Aiea, a place name consisting of one initial diacritical mark (the okina) followed entirely by vowels.