Our Faculty

Kanani Dilcher, MD

Program Director HIFMR

Dr. Kanani Dilcher was born in Wahiawa, Hawaii, and grew up on the North Shore of Oahu. She graduated from University of Hawai’i John A. Burns School of Medicine, and then went to residency at OHSU-Cascades East Family Medicine Residency Program. In her third year of residency, she was the Chief Resident, and won the teaching award at her residency program. After graduation, Dr Dilcher was recruited to rural Bandon, Oregon as a emergency room provider and hospitalist. After a few years, she realized she missed teaching, and returned back to her residency to develop a teaching hospitalist program at Sky Lakes Medical Center. She was made adjunct faculty for the OHSU Cascades East Family Medicine Residency Program. Upon the birth of her first child, Dr. Dilcher returned home to Hawai’i and worked for the Hilo Kaiser Clinic, where she served for three years. Due to her husband’s family needs, Dr. Dilcher then needed to return back to Oregon, and took a job as a family physician in the clinic, hospital, and nursing home in Reedsport.

During COVID, she decided to go back to teaching, and became the Associate Program Director at Roseburg Family Medicine Residency Program. While at this program, she ran the Lifestyle Medicine Curriculum, community projects, diversity, equity, and inclusion committee, and wellness committee, and started the Andrew Weil School of Integrative Medicine Fellowship program. Throughout her experiences in rural Oregon, she enjoyed teaching and leadership, but longed for Hawai’i. She returned in May 2025 to serve as the program director for the Hawai’i Island Family Medicine Residency Program. Dr. Dilcher feels blessed to return home with all of her medical and teaching experience to train the future generation of family physicians for Hawai’i. She also excited to serve the families of the Big Island with her interests in integrative whole health, community medicine, leadership, and rural health.

After the workday is over, you will find Dr. Dilcher teaching her children to surf, play soccer, swim with the turtles, and enjoy the local culture and fresh grown foods with her Hilo ohana.

Christine Chan, MD

Medical Director, East Hawaii Health Primary Care

Dr. Chan was born and raised on O’ahu and graduated from the University of Hawai`i John A. Burns School of Medicine. Her residency took her to Tucson, AZ, where she received additional training in Integrative Medicine. She loves caring for the breadth of Family Medicine in the outpatient clinic as well as serving as an attending on the inpatient service. Her clinical and educational interests include preventative medicine, practice improvement, interprofessional collaboration, and diversity, equity and inclusion. She is so grateful for this opportunity to cultivate these interests and give back to the community that raised her by supporting residents in their grown as future leaders.

Melissa Robey, MD, FAAFP, NABBLM-C, IBCLC, DipABLM

Residency Faculty

Dr. Robey was born in Kansas and moved to Florida with her family while in high school. She completed undergraduate and medical school at the University of Florida before her journey led to the Pacific Northwest for residency training. She practiced full spectrum family medicine in Portland, Oregon for several years before relocating to a small community in northern Minnesota where she served as the Chief of Obstetrics at a rural critical access hospital.
After spending as much time as she could in the Hawaiian Islands, Dr. Robey developed a yearning to be surrounded by the aloha spirit and serve the diverse population in Hawai`i. In 2022, she came to Hilo to help train future generations of family physicians in full spectrum care from birth to death. Dr. Robey is passionate about caring for growing families and finds great joy in welcoming new babies. She has special training in surgical obstetrics, breastfeeding medicine and lifestyle medicine. Her approach is wholistic and patient centered with an emphasis on nourishing foods, regular movement and mindfulness practice.
Away from the hospital, you may find her with her husband and two young children playing at the park, hiking, kayaking, snorkeling or otherwise enjoying the beach. She loves to garden and cook fresh foods. She looks forward to finding her Hawai`i Island `ohana and growing strong roots in the community.

Doug Rose, MD, M.B.A.

Residency Faculty

Dr. Rose was born and raised in Pennsylvania. He attended medical school at Jefferson Medical College (now known as Sidney Kimmel Medical College). Residency saw him move to New Hampshire. He joined a then brand new program and is a member of the first three year class of the New Hampshire-Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency. After residency, he stayed at Dartmouth and was a faculty member at the same program for four years. He then moved to Tennessee to join the faculty at the East Tennessee State University Family Medicine Residency in Kingsport where he stayed for the next fourteen years. For ten years in Tennessee, he served as the medical director of the residency clinic. In this role, he succeeded in receiving certification as a Patient-Centered Medical Home for the clinic (and the other two residency clinics as well). For three years he coordinated clinical efforts across all three of the department’s residency clinics in the role of Director of Clinical Operations for the Department of Family Medicine.

In order to better be equipped to understand and work within the business realm, he obtained his Master of Business Administration in 2015. He has received multiple awards for his teaching from medical students and residents. He has presented numerous local, regional, national and international lectures on topics ranging from information mastery, diabetes care, and clinical improvements. Dr. Rose is married and has three children. He enjoys spending time with his family, good (and even bad) science fiction, movies, comic books and a round of golf.

Laurie Hopman, MD

Residency Faculty

Dr Hopman grew up in Chicago but even as a little girl she aspired to be a country doctor. After college she moved to Albuquerque and attended medical school there and chose her residency in Family Medicine at a program known for training doctors for rural practice. In 1989, she moved to Honoka`a, Hawai`i where she initially worked at a sugar plantation infirmary and subsequently opened a solo practice there for 5 years. She moved to Hilo to work at John A. Burns School of Medicine, teaching medical students and residents for 5 years, before again resuming private practice in Hilo. : In addition to Family Medicine, Dr Hopman worked with Hospice of Hilo for several years and is also Board certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine.

Anna Maisu, MD

Residency Faculty

Dr. Maisu grew up in Vista, CA, and graduated from American University of Integrative Sciences located in St. Maarten. Prior to medical school, she lived in O’ahu while working at Tripler Army Medical Center as a medical technologist. Residency brought her to the Big Island where she completed her family medicine training at Hawai`i Island Family Medicine Residency program. She now serves as Chief Academic Officer to Hilo Benioff Medical Center and practices a blend of primary care and urgent care at East Hawai`i Health Center- Kea`au. Her clinical interests include chronic disease management, patient education, and quality improvement. During her free time she is a soccer mom, plant collector and loves to sing karaoke!

Tod Sugihara, DO

Residency Faculty

Dr. Sugihara was born and raised in Hilo. He is a graduate of Hilo High School. He left to attend college at the University of California at San Diego. He attended medical school in Kirksville Missouri followed by residency in Phoenix, Arizona. After residency Dr. Sugihara taught residents at the Phoenix Baptist Family Medicine Residency Program for 10 years. He than worked at Adelante Healthcare before moving back to Hilo. He is happy to be back home serving the community in which he grew up.

Jennifer Junnila Walker, MD, MPH, FAAFP

Chief Quality Officer

Dr. Jennifer J. Walker earned her MD degree and completed a family medicine residency at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She completed a fellowship in Faculty Development and earned her Master’s Degree in Public Health from the University of Washington. She is certified by the American Board of Family Medicine and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians. In addition, she a certified Lifestyle Medicine physician and Diplomate of the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine.

Dr. Walker joined the residency faculty in 2016 following her retirement as a Colonel in the US Army. Her military career allowed her to serve in a variety of practice environments, from family clinics to community hospitals to world-class tertiary care centers at military bases in the US and Europe. Immediately prior to joining the HIFMR faculty, Dr. Walker served as the Director of Graduate Medical Education at Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg, NC. Dr. Walker fell in love with Hawaii while serving as the Chief of the Medical Staff for the large outpatient healthcare facility at Schofield Barracks on Oahu, followed by Chief of Clinical Operations at US Pacific Command at Fort Shafter. She has served in demanding leadership positions at military medical facilities while deployed to the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and her military awards include the Bronze Star Medal, the Legion of Merit, and the Defense Meritorious Service Medal. Dr. Walker has been inducted into the Order of Military Medical Merit and has received the Uniformed Services Academy of Family Physicians President’s Award.

Dr. Walker has lectured extensively on medical and military topics at regional, national, and international military and civilian conferences. She has conducted and published original medical research, has authored or co-authored numerable scientific journal articles and book chapters, and has served as chair of several professional development and continuing education seminars.

David Paltin, Ph.D.

Dr. David Paltin, Ph.D. was born in Los Angeles and moved to Kansas and then Wai’anae, O’ahu at age 14. He attended Pearl City High School, and then, University of Hawaii for his Bachelors in Psychology. He received his Doctorate from Alliant University in 1991 and practiced in Kailua-Kona for 5 years, then returned to Orange, California and held various academic and clinical positions over the course of 25 years of practice, finally returning to Hilo in 2025. In 1993 he authored “Helmuth Kaiser, J.F. Masterson and the Borderline Struggle” published in Psychotherapy, and in 1995 completed the book The Parents’ Hyperactivity Handbook. He was a member of a Mental Health Subcommittee for the Hawaii Department of Education to initiate mental health services to students receiving special education services in rural Island communities. He has also written for several funded grant programs in community and pediatric behavioral health. In 2000, Dr. Paltin his article “The Lethal Violence Sequence: Prediction of State and Terrorist Behavior” was published in the journal Terrorism and republished as chapter in Lethal Violence Prediction 2000. From 1996 to 2025 he was in Private Practice and he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in clinical psychology and family therapy at National University, Chapman University, Columbia College MO, and Western School of Health Sciences. From 2020 to the present, he has been working on a series of training videos in psychology practice, ethics and psychodiagnostics with Symptom Media, Inc., who provide medical, psychology, and counseling training materials available in over 2000 academic and medical training programs around the world. Dr. Paltin’s hobbies include kanikapila (playing music), and practicing his Olelo Hawai’i (Hawaiian language) with anyone with patience enough to help him with his studies.