AT DAP HEALTH’S BIGGEST EVENT OF THE YEAR, THE MESSAGE WAS CLEAR: COMPASSION CHANGES LIVES

A deadly virus is sweeping the world. The LGBTQ+ community is being targeted.

It’s 1984.

It is also 2023.

Nearly 40 years ago, HIV was considered a mystery illness targeting gay men. With public agencies and the health care system slow to respond to the growing epidemic in the Coachella Valley, a community of grassroots volunteers established Desert AIDS Project (DAP), now known as DAP Health.

Today, a deadly virus is again sweeping the world and the rights of the LGBTQ+ community are under renewed attack, with more than 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in state legislatures across the United States.

To address the challenges of AIDS, COVID-19, mpox, and other diseases — especially among those who are disenfranchised — DAP Health has created a legacy of leadership, providing comprehensive health care for all across Southern California.

Because now as then, DAP Health’s mission remains unchanged. The organization marches on with an unwavering belief that health care is a human right.

That belief and passion were at the heart of DAP Health’s 29th annual Steve Chase Humanitarian Awards (AKA The Chase), presented by Eisenhower Health and held at the Palm Springs Convention Center on March 25, 2023. The fundraising gala has raised millions of dollars to support DAP Health and the people it serves.

“There are so many factors that affect a person’s health — starting with housing, mental health, food insecurity,” said Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Eisenhower Health Ken Wheat. “DAP Health has been and continues to be critical to our community in addressing health care on all of these levels.”

DAP Health CEO David Brinkman has noted that there are tens of thousands of people in the Coachella Valley who do not have access to health care because “the barriers of poverty are so great.” In recent years, he added, “From a perspective of health care, we saw how COVID-19 — and then mpox — impacted people who live on the margins of our society.”

But Brinkman also expressed hope.

“When we combine the Affordable Care Act with the generous donations from our supporters in the community — and then our mighty staff and volunteers — we’ll be able to care for more than

100,000 people next year, regardless of our patients’ ability to pay. That’s what creating health equity is all about.”

In 2022, Borrego Health filed for bankruptcy, putting 120,000 patients in San Diego and Riverside Counties at risk of losing their access to health care. DAP Health, Innercare, and Neighborhood Healthcare formed a lifesaving alliance to provide care for Borrego Health patients.

As a result, DAP Health’s services are expanding into 11 new cities with 26 new clinical sites. From the Salton Sea to San Diego, 600 additional physicians and medical staff will provide services from obstetrics and gerontology to HIV prevention and treatment, all under the DAP Health umbrella.

“We are honoring our founders’ vision of creating health equity for people who do not have that basic human right today,” Brinkman told the audience at The Chase. “When we see lack, we act. It’s in our DNA.”

In presenting the 2023 DAP Health Equity Award to fashion icon and philanthropist Donna Karan, DAP Health Board of Directors Vice Chair Lauri Kibby called Karan “my friend and sister-in-arms.”

Words by Barbara Kerr • Photos by Lani Garfield, David A. Lee, and Matthew Mitchell

A leader in the fashion industry’s fight against HIV/AIDS, Karan is the founder of Urban Zen, a lifestyle brand and philanthropic foundation that collaborates with existing organizations to enhance spiritual, emotional, and physical growth.

“Nobody gets away without being sick,” Karan said, accepting the award. “Each and every one of us will be that person one day. The question is: Who’s going to take care of us?” She added: “Those people who care for us are the most important people in the world. We need the ‘care’ in health care. And this organization understands that.”

Dr. Raul Ruiz, the U.S. Representative for California’s 25th District, presented the 2023 DAP Health Humanitarian Award to Desert Healthcare District & Foundation CEO Dr. Conrado E. Bárzaga and the organization’s board of directors.

As Dr. Ruiz reminded The Chase audience, “Time and time again, the District has stepped up to the plate even in the most difficult of times to protect our communities’ health.”

Accepting the award, Dr. Bárzaga reminded the audience about the challenges of DAP’s earliest years. “DAP did not wait,” he said. “DAP didn’t ask for permission. DAP organized an unprecedented response with very few or no tools at all. DAP Health armed itself with compassion, with care, with love for those who were suffering.”

Dr. Bárzaga then challenged The Chase audience. “As we work together toward building a health care model based on equity, let’s not forget that ignorance, hatred, and homophobia are still here,” he said. “That they walk together with racism, transphobia, and other forms of discrimination… We must stand against that.”

Damian Calmett has been living with HIV for almost 40 years.

A former entertainer — “a gorgeous girl with wigs and lashes, singing in clubs” — he once upon a time helped raise money for Desert AIDS Project, where he was also a patient. “I had hidden the fact that I was HIV-positive for almost three decades,” he told guests at The Chase. “I kept that a secret because of the shame, the stigma. When I came to DAP Health, I had spiraled out of control. I was homeless. I had lost everything. But because of the compassionate care, I was able to take a mess and turn it into a message of hope, a message of strength.”

Today, he is Rev. Dr. Damian Calmett, senior minister of Innerfaith Ministries Worldwide, located in Palm Springs. He is also the front desk coordinator at DAP Health. “I want people to know they’re valuable,” he said. “That when you walk in the doors, you are important.” He added: “When I touch somebody and their life has changed — and they’re able to turn their life around — you’re the ones that have been able to do that because you invested in me.”

Every time David Brinkman has walked onto the stage at The Chase — and looked out at all of the faces of those who are there to support DAP Health and the people it serves — it has been a profound moment for him.

“It’s very humbling and very emotional,” he said. “After being in my role for 15 years, I know so many in our community so well. And I love them because I see the side of them that is so deeply committed to our mission and to our vision. So to be standing in front of them makes my heart pound because I love them so much.”

He added, “I work with so many people who were not born and raised in this community, who came here from larger towns. And one of the things they really cherish is the small size of this community and how, when we all work together, we can solve social issues.”

In his closing remarks at The Chase, Brinkman noted the presence of DAP Health co-founder George Sonsel, who “heard the desperate cries of others who’d been ostracized — fired from their jobs, kicked out of their homes, and denied care — for being sick with a mysterious virus and were considered disposable because they were gay.”

Brinkman added, “George and his co-founders — and all of you who rallied behind them — knew better. You rejected fear and ignorance, and chose love.”

And Brinkman challenged The Chase audience: “When you give to DAP Health, you give not only to this community, but to yourself. Because you are this community. And as a thriving member of it, taking care of your neighbor is in your DNA, as well. You’ve always understood that it will be your legacy too.”

The burgeoning collaboration between DAP Health and e-commerce, cloud computing, streaming, and AI behemoth Amazon was sparked just over a year ago when two influential leaders engaged in some meaningful conversation.

At the behest of a good pal, Amazon Head of Community Engagement for Southern California David Ambroz agreed to take a tour of DAP Health’s Palm Springs campus led by the nonprofit’s longtime CEO, David Brinkman. While Ambroz was no newcomer to the desert — he once upon a time owned a vacation home here, and has returned frequently to visit friends, showing a particular affinity for hot spots like Joshua Tree and the Salton Sea — his knowledge of the organization founded in 1984 as Desert AIDS Project was peripheral at best. Now he would get an intimate backstage look at all that makes the agency so universally admired.

“I walked onto campus, walked into the clinics, and was just blown away,” says Ambroz, who shares his story of spending his youth first in homelessness, then in foster care, in his recently published memoir, “A Placed Called Home.” “I was a kid who went to free clinics, and they did not look like this. As I walked around, I saw the dignity with which people were treated, which was akin to what you’d expect at the best hospitals. The other thing that struck me was that the whole person was treated. I just thought that was so beautiful. I remember so well, in my own life, having

Words by Daniel Vaillancourt

to struggle to find dental care, vision care, just basic primary care. The tour kept unfolding, each new wing unfolding. But the pièce de résistance was when we walked outside, and I casually noted that DAP Health interestingly has an apartment complex abutting its property. And Brinkman said, ‘No. That’s ours.’ I couldn’t believe it.”

At the time of his site visit, Ambroz was very new to Amazon, having spent more than a decade in a similar role at The Walt Disney Company. “I had an incredible run at Disney,” he says. “But when I looked out at the horizon and thought about what is that next step — where can I stretch and learn and grow, and what company is doing the kind of scripting that makes me passionate — there were very few places you could compare to Amazon. I was very excited when the opportunity arose, and I went after it.”

Immediately after meeting Brinkman, Ambroz knew that it was in all parties’ interests for Amazon to support DAP Health. And thus, the company signed on as the presenting sponsor of the 2022 Steve Chase Humanitarian Awards. Amazon was back at The Chase this year, at the same level of support, albeit as platinum sponsor (with Eisenhower Health serving as presenting sponsor).

“One of the best methods to support communities is not to come in and dictate solutions, but to find the folks who are doing the great work, or have great

ideas, or have achieved great results, and listen and learn, then support,” says Ambroz of the community engagement philosophy he and his employer share. “That’s how I’ve approached my role in the region. Identify organizations and individuals, then see how we fit into that puzzle. Sometimes it’s philanthropy of product. Sometimes it’s volunteerism. Sometimes it’s monetary. Sometimes it’s partnership in hiring.”

Ambroz is supremely thankful that, in Amazon, he has found a safe space to effect change in areas that most matter to him on a personal level. “I was homeless for 12 years, and then I went into foster care,” he says. “Both of those periods in my life were really brutal. And when I think back on the needs my family and I had, one of the things that most haunted me was the constant insecurity surrounding access to food. Every day, food — and shelter — but really food.”

Just some of the other local charitable organizations Ambroz encouraged Amazon to support include Palm Springs Unified School District, College of the Desert, the Cathedral City Boys and Girls Club, FIND Food Bank, and Feeding America Riverside | San Bernardino. “We were so proud of our partnership with ‘Feed SoCal,’ which was an employeedriven food drive inside all our facilities in partnership with FIND Food Bank and Feeding America,” he says. “More than 40 of our facilities and retail locations participated. This work struck a chord with our employees who wanted to give back to their communities. That’s one community engagement effort of which I’m particularly proud.”

In Brinkman and DAP Health, Ambroz feels he’s found a someone and a somewhere that share many of his and Amazon’s leadership principles. “This idea of customer obsession and working backward from the needs of your customers into what you must do to deliver those needs,” he stresses. “I was listening to David and thinking, ‘You could be an Amazon executive.’ I was so

struck by his insight, ‘How can a person be medically compliant when they’re homeless?’ Boy did that reach into my heart and give it a squeeze.”

Ambroz further describes how he sees DAP Health not just looking around the corner, but around corners, plural, each of which have corners of their own. “I was so struck by that future-thinking mindset,” he continues. “I don’t think it’s usual for a nonprofit to flex that muscle so substantially as they face the immediate needs of the day. And then, for DAP Health to have the full buyin at all levels of government and the community speaks not just to success, but to diplomacy and engagement, which are other aspects we value tremendously at Amazon.”

As for last year’s The Chase itself, Ambroz remembers having a fantastic time. “We had three gorgeous tables, and volunteers from the Glamazons,

our LGBTQ employee affinity group, as ambassadors and escorts. Oh, and I spent way too much at the silent auction!”

Ambroz says that over the last year, as he’s attended other health centers around the country, he’s mentioned DAP Health as a shining example of how to do things right. “The organization has become my north star in terms of doing the good work we hope to do with community engagement,” he says. “So, when David came back and was talking about The Chase for 2023, it was really a no-brainer to get behind this event and this organization. And what I would say is that this platinum sponsorship is one of our biggest investments in the region philanthropically, reflecting commensurately the impact DAP Health makes.”

And so, Ambroz and Amazon hope to continue their support of DAP Health, especially now that the organization’s acquisition of Borrego Health will see its number of patients served annually swell to more than 120,000, including women and children.

“The hell I went through is nothing we should duplicate in any child in this country or anywhere,” concludes Ambroz. “The fire that forged me should never have been lit, both in the brutality of the homelessness, with a near complete lack of access to health care, and the systemic problems I experienced in the child welfare system. I would say the innate thing we all need to do is close our eyes and imagine a system we’d want to put our own children through, and that’s really what we should work to develop. Together.”