Rachel Dacks

Rachel Dacks speaks on Biocultural Restoration for the Promotion of Public Health on the Panel on Adults at the Public Health Resonance Culturally & Regionally Relevant Physical Activity Across the Globe Webinar program.

Bio

Rachel Dacks is an Assistant Professor of Biocultural Stewardship in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She grew up in Miami, Florida and first came to Hawaiʻi as a protected species fisheries observer, working on longline tuna boats. While her early academic background and work experience focused on marine ecology and fisheries, her experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in a small Indigenous village in Fiji made her acutely award of using qualitative and quantitative methods to better understand complex human dimensions of natural resource management across the Pacific Islands region.

She is specifically interested in how mointoring and evaluation of conservation and resource management interventions can be guided by biocultural approaches, in order to reflect the wellbeing of the entire system. Some of her current research is focused on understanding the reciprocal relationships between people and place through exploring the motivations and benefits experienced by environmental volunteers. Rachel spends many weekends participating in community workdays, in which she is able to engage in meaningful physical activity in very special places around the island of Oʻahu.