Alumni Profile: Joni Kamiya, MSOT ’99, OTR/L

by Michele Berhorst • December 11, 2024

Kamiya wears her WashU cap while working at the 42nd Annual Okinawan Festival Aug. 31 to Sept. 1, 2024, in Waipahu, HI.

Throughout her life, Joni Kamiya, MSOT ’99, OTR/L, has been passionate about her family and their papaya farm and helping others through occupational therapy (OT). Those two sides of Kamiya have shaped her OT practice and “ag-vocate” efforts as she helps people live meaningful lives in her home state of Hawai’i.

Kamiya was born and raised on her family’s papaya farm on Hawai’i’s North Shore. Her father, Kenneth, served in the Air Force during Vietnam. “He used the GI Bill to attend the University of Hawai’i College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources to earn a Bachelor of Science in tropical crop production. He helped my grandfather develop our papaya line – Kamiya Gold – with the university,” Kamiya explained. “We (his children) had to get up early on Saturdays to pick and wash papaya. It was hard, and, at times, we didn't enjoy it. But it taught us so many lessons about what you put into life, you get out of life. It also taught us how to work together. There was also fun and freedom on the farm. We could ride our bikes and play in the streams – you can’t beat that experience. I had the best childhood living in the country!”

But when Kamiya was in high school, the papaya ringspot virus (PRSV) started devastating her family’s fields. “By my sophomore year in college, my dad warned, ‘Don’t go into ag. We might not have the farm.’ Since I loved animals, I wanted to go to vet school. I decided to volunteer as a vet tech to try it out,” Kamiya recalled. “I found out quickly I was allergic to cats and dogs. The movie ‘Regarding Henry’ just came out, where they showed therapy interventions. I was interested, so I volunteered at the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific, where I met a wonderful mentor and learned about traumatic brain and spinal cord injury. I also worked as a companion caregiver with older adults. I knew then OT was the right career for me.”

She earned a Bachelor of Science in health and exercise science from the University of Hawai’i. As Kamiya applied to OT schools on the coasts, her father had some advice: “‘You know what, Jone? Don't go to the East Coast. That’s hard on us to have to take you there. If you have a chance to go to WashU, go. I saw amazing things while I was there for the Danforth Fellowship in Agriculture. You should go.’ I was accepted, I went, and he was right. The experience I had there still helps me today. For example, I got to see Botox before it became widely used today for dystonia. I tell my clients stories of what I saw at WashU because that research makes a difference in how they live their lives – evidence-based research into practice.”

While Kamiya fondly remembers many of her OT instructors, one stands out: Jeanenne Dallas, MA, OTR/L, FAOTA. “One of the first things Jeanenne said to us was, ‘Don’t close doors! Don’t close your mind to an opportunity!’ If not for Jeanenne, I wouldn’t have accepted my first job at Idylwood Care Center in California helping to create a new type of program for people with mental illness, working as an occupational therapist in a neurobehavioral unit,” Kamiya said. “This was an integrated program with a doctor and a psychiatrist, where we could address the patient’s medical diagnosis, mental health, and psychosocial issues. That experience taught me how to see things in a different light and how we can impact caregivers to see the patient differently too. That has forever stuck with me, and I still use the concepts I learned today.”

Kamiya left that job to work in wheelchair seating and positioning, which gave her experience with assistive technology and devices. She then returned to her “base” by working as a learning coordinator at Belmont Village, an assistive living facility, planning events and meaningful daily activities for older adult clients. In her personal life, Kamiya got married and had her first child. “My husband decided he wanted to raise our children next to family in Hawai’i, and he wanted to be a farmer. I said, ‘You’re not a farmer,’ but we moved back to Hawai’i anyway. This was in 2006, and the agriculture scene was fairly quiet, but the genetically modified organism (GMO) taro controversy was brewing.”

The researchers at the University of Hawai’i were fighting a senate bill that would ban the genetic modification of taro because they wanted the freedom to modify taro to protect it from diseases that could threaten to wipe out the Islands’ crops. The activists successfully blocked the funding for the research. By 2010, the activists started to focus on all GMO technology, including papaya. Kamiya understood the whole modification process; she worked as a lab assistant at the university with her father’s colleagues on the preliminary study, as she had the research background from her time at WashU.

“We were doing the cross-protection method and learned the rationale behind the GMO protection against viruses. The professors were being attacked, and their research was in danger of not being funded. I knew social media was about to blow up, but professors weren’t on it and didn’t understand how bad it was going to be,” Kamiya recalled. “I kept saying, ‘We have to say something. We should use evidence-based research to help people understand why the farmers need this technology.’ My family didn’t want me to say anything because we would be attacked. I said we will be attacked anyway, so let’s teach people what ag research is about and how it saves the crops.”

So Kamiya started her blog “Hawai’i Farmer’s Daughter” under the name Joni Rose for anonymity in 2013. She used her pragmatic yet passionate voice to become an “ag-vocate” for the farmers and shared how GMO technology saved her family’s farm in the 1990s, when the PRSV devastated the industry. It was scientists from Cornell University and the University of Hawai’i who discovered a way to use the genetic portion of the virus to inoculate papayas against the disease, just as the flu shot makes people resistant to the flu. Her advocacy efforts took Kamiya to New York in 2015 for a three-month fellowship at Cornell University through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on sustainability. In 2018, she traveled to Germany for two weeks through the John J. McCloy Fellowship on Global Trends to see what was happening to German energy and the energy crisis in the UK and France a few years before the Russia-Ukraine war began.

During this time, Kamiya’s OT career and leadership also flourished. After returning to Hawai’i in 2006, she worked in acute settings and skilled nursing facilities. She is the current president of the Hawai’i Occupational Therapy Association after serving on their public relations committee for 10 years. She is also a preceptor at BAYADA Home Health Care. “This is one of the best jobs I’ve had, because I feel like I can always do the right thing, and I’m supported by management. I teach our new hires. My first question was, ‘How long do I get to train my occupational therapists?’ Their answer was, ‘As long as you need.’ I am focused on making sure we advocate for our clients and that we give them the best care we can.”

Another project Kamiya is involved in is volunteering with a community caregiver support group. “When I joined, I thought I was going to drive people to appointments. When the director, Rose Nakamura, an awardee of the Rosalind Carter Caregiver award, discovered I was an occupational therapist, she said, ‘We don't want you to do that. Come to my office; I want to interview you,’” Kamiya said. “She wanted me to teach skills to the caregivers. Working with them taught me what happens after patients are discharged from rehab. I was able to see what issues happen in the home, what the family dynamics are, and how important it is to have good clinicians in home health care. The great thing is, we as occupational therapists are looking beyond our jobs and sharing our skill sets with the community. For example, we present fall prevention awareness and home modification classes at senior centers. We provide information and resources that help caregivers look after their family and loved ones.”

The papaya farm is now run by the third generation of Kamiyas – her brother, Michael, who became Kamiya Gold, Inc. president in 2021. Her dad, 82, still works there, keeping busy in the greenhouse or on special projects. Many of Kamiya’s clients are like her father, seeking meaningful activity well into their senior years.

“I had a lady who was 99 who wanted to garden, but she kept falling on the steps and rocks getting to her garden. I asked her what she wanted to grow – herbs, corn and onions. I worked with her daughter, and she had a carpenter come out to make a smoother path with a rail so her mother could get to her garden safely. But she was still frustrated on rainy days,” Kamiya recalled. “My kids had to do a service project, so I put the two together. My kids built her raised, accessible garden boxes where she could sit and garden when it was raining. The lady was thrilled with her boxes, and my kids learned how to care for others in their community. It was a win-win for everyone. Two years later, she’s still gardening!”