State's vital stats pioneer honored nationally | The Honolulu Advertiser

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State's vital stats pioneer honored nationally | The Honolulu Advertiser | Hawaii's Newspaper

Updated at 7:31 p.m., Tuesday, June 24, 2008

State's vital stats pioneer honored nationally

By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Alvin T. Onaka of the state Health Department was honored by the National Association for Public Health Statistics and Information Systems.

Courtesy of state Health Department

Alvin T. Onaka of Hawai'i received a prestigious career achievement award at the recent National Association for Public Health Statistics and Information Systems' 75th annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.

Onaka, the state registrar of vital statistics and chief of the Department of Health's Office of Health Status Monitoring, was presented the 27th Halbert L. Dunn Award for his international, national and state level demographic and public health contributions in a 40-plus year career, the state Health Department announced today.

"The award is well-deserved," Health Director Dr. Chiyome Leinaala Fukino said.

Onaka's leadership has made Hawai'i a national leader in vital statistics, noted Fukino.

His pioneering contributions include:

Helping Hawai'i become the first state in the nation to enact legislation requiring a bride and groom to declare both their middle and surnames after marriage, facilitating the most frequent method of legal name change especially for women.

Onaka and his staff developed a seamless electronic link between the Honolulu Medical Examiner's Office and the health department's computerized death registration system which won the 2007 achievement award from the Center for Digital Government in the government-to-government category. The Health Department's electronic death registration system was the first of its kind in the nation.

Hawai'i was also the first state to enact legislation that allowed verification of birth certificate information in lieu of ordering certified copies of vital records and piloted the electronic verification of vital event (EVVE) system nationally.

A Honolulu native, Onaka is an 'Iolani School graduate and earned his doctorate from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has been a member of the affiliate graduate faculty in the Population Studies Program at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa since 1982.

Reach Rod Ohira at rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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