Meet the CEO

Welcome to our website!

We were so pleased to see that our work at Desert AIDS Project is so much in keeping with the recently-released National HIV/AIDS Strategy: Updated to 2020. When it was live-streamed to the world via Internet on July 30, 2015 the Strategy Update detailed principles and priorities to guide our collective work in fighting HIV in the U.S. over the next five years, by meeting these goals:

1. Reduce new infections
2. Increase access to care and improve health outcomes for people living with HIV
3. Reduce HIV-related disparities and health inequities
4. Achieve a more coordinated national response to the HIV epidemic

Reducing new infections

We’re leading the coalition of Get Tested Coachella Valley community partners to let everyone know how essential HIV testing is to ending this epidemic. We’re helping those who are HIV-positive to access care immediately because we know that once they get on the right medications, their viral load falls, helping make them 96% less contagious.

Increasing access to care and improving health outcomes for those with HIV

Among the other accomplishments noted in the Midpoint Update for Get Tested Coachella Valley, one of the most exciting is that the 70+ community partners have linked to care 89.9% of those testing positive. That exceeds the California average of 54%, the U.S. average of 66%, and the CDC’s target of 80%!

Reduce HIV-related disparities and health inequities

Today, D.A.P. is a “medical home” to more than 2,000 patients and clients living with HIV or AIDS. But we are also committed to serving all who can benefit from our care, even if not living with HIV. For instance, the 2014 Riverside County LGBT Health and Wellness Profile noted “… in Riverside County, where our LGBT community in the eastern county is the third largest by size in the United States, a full and objective assessment of the community’s health concerns and disparities is desperately needed.”

Achieve a more coordinated national response to the HIV epidemic

The vision is for the U.S. to become a place where new HIV infections are rare. When those infections do occur, every person, regardless of age, gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, or socio-economic circumstances should have unfettered access to high-quality, life-extending care, free from stigma and discrimination. One community at a time … that’s how we defeat AIDS nationally. The end-game is all about the day when people come to Desert AIDS Project to be cured of HIV and to have high-quality health care in a world without AIDS. Until there’s a cure … and beyond! David Brinkman, MBA CEO, Desert AIDS Project