Nicole “Nikki” Kalani Apana, a 2026 Pisacano Scholar, is a fourth-year medical student at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in the PRIME-US program and a second-year MPP (Master of Public Policy) student at the Harvard Kennedy School. Native Hawaiian and Italian, Nikki was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and calls both California and Hawai’i home.

Nikki graduated from Stanford University with honors in human biology, where she led a qualitative study on implicit bias in patient care and volunteered in Stanford’s free clinics connecting under-resourced communities to healthcare and social services.

After college, Nikki served with National Health Corps Philadelphia as an HIV/Hepatitis C patient navigator, coordinating wraparound substance use treatment. She then stayed as a Social Determinants of Health patient navigator at a Philadelphia federally qualified health center, linking patients to food, housing, legal, and mental health resources. During this time, she also served on the board of Indigenous Peoples’ Day Philly, where she worked with the mayor and state legislators to bring Indigenous history education into public schools and organize citywide cultural events.

At UCSF, Nikki’s research has focused on substance use, harm reduction, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) health disparities. Motivated by watching a family member struggle with addiction and homelessness, she has studied harm reduction vending machines in VA supportive housing and published in JAMA, Harm Reduction Journal, and the Substance Use & Addiction Journal. After the 2023 Lāhainā wildfires devastated her ancestral homeland of Maui, she published several pieces in JAMA advocating for NHPI health equity and began serving on the SAMHSA ‘Ohana Center of Excellence Steering Committee, where she co-developed “culture cards” to train providers in culturally grounded, trauma-informed care. She also directs UCSF’s NABARI Youth Decolonization Camp, mentoring Indigenous high schoolers in pathways to careers in medicine and science.

In her MPP program, Nikki has worked with the Harvard Project on Indigenous Governance to support the Chickasaw Nation in building food sovereignty initiatives. She was also awarded the Dukakis Fellowship to work in the Hawai’i Governor’s Office on the Rural Health Transformation Program. There, she led development of the state’s Native Hawaiian Community Engagement Strategy and its first statewide data-mapping process to build an evaluation framework for the program. She also advocates annually on Capitol Hill for Indian Health Service funding and tribal residency programs.

As a future family physician and policy leader, Nikki hopes to work at the intersection of clinical care and structural change, caring for Indigenous communities and patients affected by substance use and houselessness. She plans to shape Medicaid policy and strengthen Indigenous healthcare systems, including the Indian Health Service and Native Hawaiian Healthcare System, to expand access to high-quality primary care for marginalized communities.

Outside of medicine, Nikki is a hula and Tahitian dancer trained by Kumu Richard Smith of Hālau Nā Mamo Noʻeau. She also competes in CrossFit and Hyrox events in her free time and enjoys being a neighborhood foodie with friends and family.