Fourteen students graduated Sunday from the first Emergency Medical Technician training program ever held in Waiʻanae, completing a 12-week course that let them become EMTs without commuting across the island to Honolulu. The program was offered through Kapiʻolani Community College in partnership with the Waiʻanae Coast Comprehensive Health Center and Leeward Community College's Waiʻanae Moku Education Center, bringing state-required EMT instruction directly into the community for the first time.
David Di Martino, one of the graduates, said the program gave him a path into healthcare after he moved back home to Hawaiʻi, calling it his way of getting into the field, according to Hawaii News Now. Program organizers said the effort is part of a broader push to grow the healthcare workforce in West Oʻahu, and that placing training in Waiʻanae itself removes the travel and cost barriers that have long kept local residents from pursuing EMT careers. Michele Chrissy Kuahine said the program brought Kapiʻolani Community College's EMT training directly into the Waiʻanae community, eliminating those obstacles for students who previously had few options besides driving into town.
Hands-On Training Close to Home
Students in the cohort completed their clinical and field rotations at Waiʻanae Coast Comprehensive Health Center, as well as at Pali Momi Medical Center and The Queen's Medical Center–Punchbowl in Honolulu, gaining hands-on experience across multiple care settings while earning college credit toward their certification. Waiʻanae Coast Comprehensive Health Center, founded in 1972, is the largest employer on the Leeward Coast, with more than 700 staff spread across its main clinic, satellite sites, and school-based health programs, according to Mployer Advisor. The health center also runs the coast's only 24-hour emergency room, giving trainees direct exposure to the kind of trauma and acute care calls they will handle as working EMTs.
The new cohort's tuition, uniforms, textbooks, and national certification testing fees were fully covered through the University of Hawaiʻi Community Colleges' Good Jobs Hawaiʻi initiative, according to University of Hawaiʻi System News. Good Jobs Hawaiʻi has enrolled more than 6,000 residents statewide since launching in 2023, and a University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization analysis found that program completers see their annual earnings rise by an average of $7,200, or roughly $1,800 per quarter. Participants also receive dedicated career navigation support as part of the initiative, per the same UH System News account.
Decades of Advocacy Behind the Waiʻanae Program
The Waiʻanae-based training didn't happen overnight. Leeward Community College Associate Professor Lucy Gay spent decades pushing for expanded healthcare training options in West Oʻahu, work that eventually led to dedicated study and practice space for the EMT cohort at Leeward CC's Waiʻanae Moku Education Center, the satellite campus serving the Leeward Coast.
The Waiʻanae cohort's graduation lands alongside a separate, city-run effort to decentralize EMT training. The City and County of Honolulu Emergency Medical Services launched its own five-month West Oʻahu EMT academy at Waiʻanae Coast Comprehensive Health Center in February, enrolling an inaugural class of 12 Leeward Coast residents who train through clinical rotations in the health center's emergency department, according to the Office of the Mayor. Graduates entering municipal service can expect starting pay of $66,144 a year, or $31.80 an hour, for entry-level Emergency Medical Technician I positions, per the city's August recruitment cycle.
Addressing a Statewide Staffing Squeeze
Kapiʻolani Community College remains the primary academic institution training EMTs on Oʻahu, delivering the 400-hour classroom and clinical curriculum required for state licensure, according to the Honolulu Emergency Services Department. Graduates must still pass National Registry exams before they can practice. The demand these programs are built to meet is substantial: emergency responders across Hawaiʻi answered 146,418 calls and logged 6,526 trauma registry encounters during the 2025 data year, according to the state Department of Health.
Honolulu EMS has recently made headway against a staffing shortage that has strained the department for years, pushing frontline vacancies toward historic near-zero levels in summer 2026 after Kapiʻolani CC programs graduated 28 new EMTs and 21 new paramedics, per KHON2. The Honolulu City Council reappointed Dr. James Ireland as Emergency Services Department director in April 2025 after testimony from current and former paramedics detailed chronic staffing shortages and heavy overtime demands on Oʻahu ambulance crews, prompting city officials to form a task force aimed at addressing paramedic burnout. Even with those gains, the steady call volume across the islands means locally rooted training pipelines like Waiʻanae's remain central to keeping the workforce stable in the years ahead.
