What Is Known about Substance Use in Hawai'i: A Scoping Review

Substance use is a significant public health and social welfare issue in the state of Hawai'i. Literature and data about the most affected populations and geographies in Hawai'i are scattered. A scoping review was conducted to assess the extent of available information about substance use in Hawai'i. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) Checklist was used as a guide, using 3 databases: PubMed, Web of Science, and CINAHL for publication years 2010-2023. A manual search was conducted to identify other reports. A total of 21 documents were included in the synthesis. The synthesis revealed a large focus on substance use among Native Hawaiians and adolescents. The granularity of geographical data was found to be at island-level and the 3 most common substances reported were alcohol, marijuana, and methamphetamine. There were data for a wide range of racial and ethnic groups, which is unique due to the diversity in the state of Hawai'i. Most documents used national datasets for reporting substance use in Hawai'i. The findings identified gaps in the literature that can be filled by future research such as focusing on the rise of substance use among older adults, disaggregating data on Pacific Islander populations in Hawai'i, reporting substance use data in geographical areas smaller than island-level, increasing the collection of data on groups that have a high risk for health problems or are underserved by health services, and intensifying collection of data about fentanyl use in Hawai'i.