Stonewall Medical Center's Dr. Clayton Barbour and Dr. Jason Halperin
An HIV A-Team
At DAP Health’s Stonewall Medical Center, two very different physicians — both supremely devoted HIV/AIDS specialists — have formed the perfect partnership.
Words & image by Daniel Vaillancourt
HIV/AIDS specialist Dr. Clayton Barbour, 67, began at DAP Health back in 1994. In case you’re not counting, that’s three decades ago. But he’s been practicing HIV care since 1982. That’s 42 years in the field.
Director of Specialty Programs Dr. Jason Halperin, 45, came to DAP Health just last year, bringing with him more than 14 years of experience in the same discipline.
Working side by side at Stonewall Medical Center in Cathedral City, Dr. Barbour and Dr. Halperin — both married men; the former gay, the latter straight — use their shared passion for HIV and their shared commitment to DAP Health’s mission to better the lives of their patients. On a recent afternoon, I sat down with them for a chat.
Dr. Barbour, please tell me about your time at Stonewall prior to Dr. Halperin’s arrival.
Dr. Barbour: Well, it was hectic because I was the only physician. I was supervising four nurse practitioners and physician assistants during that time. It was like that for a while. Then COVID-19 came along in 2020, so it was hard to interview anybody. The few interviews we did have just didn’t pan out. So, 2020 to 2023 were the lean years. I think we did a good job, but it was just hard trying to keep up.
Dr. Halperin, what attracted you to DAP Health?
Dr. Halperin: I’m really good friends with [Stonewall Physician Assistant] Bruce Hinton. I had the amazing pleasure of working with Bruce in New Orleans, and knew he had come out here and was working with Dr. Barbour at Stonewall. I will tell you that he was just the most effusive about his experience, even though those years were tough. He felt like the medical care being provided here was of a higher caliber than he’d ever seen — which I could not agree with more.
Tell me about your working relationship.
Dr. Barbour: It’s a great collaboration. It’s always good to have a second opinion sometimes. It’s also helped take some of the administrative burden off of me so I can spend more time on patient care.
Dr. Halperin: Clearly, Dr. Barbour has huge shoes to fill. He’s a brilliant physician. He has seen many of these patients for decades. They’re highly complicated. It’s an older patient population than that of your typical provider of HIV care.
Dr. Barbour: They were probably in their 30s and 40s when I started here. Now they’re in their 60s and 70s — some in their 80s.
Dr. Halperin: Over and over again, I have heard, “I was on death’s doorstep, and Dr. Barbour saved me!”
Dr. Barbour: We also do primary care. At some places, patients get a primary care doctor and have a specialist who does their HIV. We do it all. I take care of their diabetes or high blood pressure, whatever it may be. Really, nowadays, with modern medications, 90% of what we’re doing is general medicine. I think it’s better to have somebody who does it all.
Dr. Halperin: We’re also curing people with hepatitis C. We have a PrEP program for HIV prevention. And we have a really robust gender wellness program.
How does your only being here Mondays and Tuesdays work?
Dr. Halperin: It should be more! [Laughs.]
Dr. Barbour: But some things can be done also by telemedicine, when Dr. Halperin is at DAP Health’s Centro Medico Escondido.
Dr. Halperin: And we do have a new M.D., Kenji Hawthorne, starting September 6. The plan is to have him be here Wednesday and Thursday. Our vision is to integrate our HIV physicians at two sites into one clinical group. Dr. Hawthorne will be our first physician to spend three days a week at our Sunrise campus in Palm Springs, and two days a week here at Stonewall. But the reality is that this really works only because Dr. Barbour is here on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
How are you two alike?
Dr. Barbour: We’re alike in that we both have a lot of knowledge of HIV. I’ve been doing it for 30 years here, plus three years in San Francisco before that. I think my first patient with HIV had it before they even had a name for it. That was in medical school in 1982, and I’ve been doing it ever since. My medical career sort of grew up along with HIV. It’s been something that I just took an interest in and dedicated myself to.
So, Dr. Barbour, HIV was thrust upon you — a challenge you gladly accepted and relished. Dr. Halperin, you sought HIV out. Why?
Dr. Halperin: I was born in New York, and my folks moved outside of Miami when I was 10. My mom was an artist who taught art classes. She would often have one of her students come home. They were typically these brilliant, beautiful men. And unfortunately, six months later, we were going to their funeral. I was just beside myself. From that early age, I knew all I wanted to do is HIV work. I saw so many people get sick and pass that I went to medical school thinking I would be doing palliative HIV care. It’s just a miracle. I do not do palliative. I did not think I would be helping people live absolutely full lives. For the patient, HIV is always going to be highest on their list of concerns. But as the clinician, it’s probably number eight on my list.
Dr. Barbour: If you look back at the bad old days when I came here, [DAP Health Director of Infectious Diseases] Dr. Shubha Kerkar and I would have six to 10 patients in the hospital at a time. We’d have maybe four or five patients die per month. That was back in ‘94, ‘95. I was the director of the hospice for HIV. We closed it a year later. The modern therapy for HIV with Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART) came about in late 1995, early 1996. Patients literally on death’s door would walk out of hospice.
Dr. Halperin: Another way we are alike is that we are both academically focused. There are a lot of people who provide good HIV care. But there are others, like Dr. Barbour, who go that extra step to know the latest data and science. And we very much align there.