CA LGBTQ Caucus Comes to DAP Health

DAP Health CEO David Brinkman takes five of its 13 members on a tour of the nonprofit’s Sunrise campus in Palm Springs.

When a handful of members of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus traveled to Palm Springs on the evening of February 29 to begin a tour of area health care and social services organizations, their first stop was DAP Health, where CEO David Brinkman led them through the nonprofit’s Sunrise campus.

According to its website, “[The LGBTQ Caucus] was formed in 2002 to create a forum for California legislators to discuss issues that affect LGBTQ Californians and to further the goal of equality and justice for all Californians. California became the first state in the United States to officially form a caucus of openly-LBGTQ state legislators and continues to be a leader of progress for all Americans … Despite tremendous progress and an unprecedented swell of support for the LGBTQ community worldwide, there is still work to do to protect and uplift the most vulnerable in our community. The LGBTQ Caucus strives to advocate for diversity and inclusion of all people, including differently abled bodies. Our Caucus is working diligently to support LGBTQ leaders that represent our community at the local, state, and federal levels.”

As the sun was setting behind the San Jacinto Mountains, Brinkman greeted California State Senators Susan Talamantes Eggman (LGBTQ Caucus chair) and Steve Padilla; California State Assemblymembers Christopher Ward (LGBTQ Caucus vice chair), Corey Jackson, and Alex Lee; Legislative Advisor Oracio Gonzalez; LGBTQ Caucus Consultants Natalia Garcia and Jacob Fraker; and DAP Health Board Member Dr. Frank Figueroa at the nonprofit’s Vista Sunrise I, an 81-unit affordable housing complex dedicated to people living with HIV.

Brinkman began by explaining that when DAP Health was founded in 1984 as Desert AIDS Project at the dawn of the epidemic, HIV medications were a dozen years from being developed. DAP therefore supported people then dying of complications from the virus with a host of alternative therapies — acupuncture, massage, reiki, yoga, meditation, and counseling — meant to boost the immune system. It’s this array of wraparound services that DAP Health uses to this day in its unique, whole-person model of care for patients.

Physically pointing to both Vista Sunrise I and to the nearly completed Vista Sunrise II — which will bring 60 more units of affordable housing to DAP Health’s Sunrise campus — Brinkman stated that these two complexes seek to lessen the impact of two major social drivers of health that result in poorer health outcomes: lack of housing and transportation. At DAP Health, patients can simply walk to their medical, dental, and behavioral health appointments.

The next stop was the Barbara Keller LOVE Building, where Brinkman showed his guests the Client Wellness and Social Services departments, careful to focus on the gargantuan mural dedicated to Les Dames du Soleil Dottie & Maude (AKA Douglas Woodmansee and Marshall Pearcy). The tribute is designed to honor the longtime married couple of drag entertainers who raised more than $1.2 million on behalf of DAP during the early years, often by gathering single and five-dollar bills at their performances.

From there it was onto the Annette Bloch CARE Building, with its Orange, Blue, Green, and Yellow clinics. They are named as such not only to honor the colors of the chakra, but to lessen the stigma of seeking care related to their disciplines: sexual wellness, HIV, cancer, etc.

The organization’s three sexual wellness clinics — in Palm Springs, Cathedral City, and Indio — are often a patient’s initiation to the wealth of programs and services available at DAP Health. “Impressed by our stigma- and shame-free attitude when visiting for free STI testing and treatment, many decide to make us their home for primary care as well.” It was at this point that Brinkman stressed that primary care visits on the Sunrise campus now include the routine questions, “Have you eaten today?” and “Do you have enough food for the next two days?” If the answer to either is “No,” the patient is given a bag of nonperishable groceries and enrolled as clients of the organization’s Social Services department.

Brinkman concluded the tour by making it abundantly clear that this revolutionary brand of holistic patient care and wraparound social services devised at DAP Health’s Sunrise campus over the last four decades is the everlasting legacy of DAP’s founders and of all the community supporters and staff members who followed them. It is also one that will be adapted and applied to the 24 other clinical sites that now comprise DAP Health.

As DAP Health looks forward to its next 40 years, and to making a lasting impact as it takes its place on the Southern California health care landscape, it can take great pride in the strong, shining foundation of wraparound services and culturally competent care laid by members of the LGBTQ community and their allies — those courageous, compassionate souls who were the first in the desert to care for the gay men whose lives were cut far too short by HIV and AIDS.

(Photo L to R: Senator Steve Padilla, Senator Susan Talamantes Eggman (chair), Caucus Consultant Jacob Fraker, DAP Health CEO David Brinkman, Legislative Advisor Oracio Gonzalez, Assemblymember Corey Jackson, Assemblymember Christopher Ward (vice chair), Assemblymember Alex Lee, DAP Health Board Member Dr. Frank Figueroa, and Caucus Consultant Natalia Garcia.)