The Healthy Hawai‘i Summit will be held at the Hawaiʻi Convention Center on December 5, 2025. The event will mark the mid-point of the Healthy Hawaiʻi Strategic Plan 2030 (HHSP)  and reflect on progress across the following Program Area Plans:

The Healthy Hawai‘i Summit will:
    • Strengthen community by facilitating cross-sector, learning, connection, and collaboration;
    • Promote creativity and highlight innovative, collective, and courageous solutions;
    • Showcase community successes in chronic disease prevention and control through storytelling;
    • Advance strategies for continuing implementation of the HHSP 2030; and
    • Deepen our collective focus on health equity across Hawaiʻi.
Keynote Speaker

Joelle Lester is Executive Director of the Public Health Law Center, where she leads the development and implementation of programs to deliver legal expertise to support community-led policy change. Building on more than two decades of experience in public policy and law, Joelle is working to expand the Center's reach in climate change, healthy food access, and commercial tobacco control while deepening efforts to center equity and justice.

Joelle joined the Center in 2012 and has become a respected national leader in commercial tobacco control law and policy. Early in her tenure, she spearheaded the Center’s work partnering with Black-led organizations to advocate for a federal ban on menthol cigarettes. In June 2022, Lester was given the Velvet Fist Award for steadfast commitment to saving Black lives, awarded by the Center for Black Health and Equity and the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council.

Prior to joining the Center, Lester worked as a litigation associate at the Minneapolis firm of McGrann Shea Carnival Straughn & Lamb, Chartered. Before attending law school, Lester was a grassroots organizer, organizing director, and executive director of the Oregon Student Association, a nonprofit higher education advocacy group. She also worked as a lobbyist for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, advocating for public K–12 education. Lester earned a B.A. in psychology and women’s studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School.