Welcome to Vision Forward
A note from David Brinkman, DAP Health CEO
In 2018, DAP Health launched our ambitious Vision 2020 Capital Campaign to raise $20 million to embark upon a much-needed, major campus expansion that would enable us to grow our programs and services, thereby increasing the number of clients we provide for annually.
By the time COVID-19 blindsided all of us in early 2020, we’d already raised $13.5 Million and built two of our four new clinics. To come to the immediate aid of our newly challenged community, the campaign was paused.
Vision 2020 has morphed into a new 10-year plan titled VISION FORWARD > Building for a Healthier Tomorrow. By enlarging our physical footprint, we will be in better programmatic position to fulfill our mission, which remains to ensure the health and well-being of every member of our community—so that each may experience their most fulfilled life. When VISION FORWARD is actualized, DAP Health will have to capacity to grow from 10,000 people served today to 25,000 people.
We once again turn to the Coachella Valley’s most generous philanthropists, like you, to help raise the remaining $6.5 million needed to finish this effort.
Most view and experience the Coachella Valley as a sublime oasis. But for many, that pristine picture is far from reality. Many neighbors—people of color, people living with HIV/AIDS, people living in poverty, and trans individuals, many of whom have yet found their way to DAP Health—wrestle daily here with pain, sadness, and desperation.
Have Not = Can Not
These staggering Coachella Valley statistics are proof that many of our neighbors are lacking in support and resources while facing multiple public health crises and societal inequities.
Because a community can only be as strong as its weakest member—as healthy as its sickest—it’s crucial that we join forces so that barriers to health and wellness are abolished.
After all, is it not the duty of those standing tall to lift up those who have fallen?
How DAP Health is Poised to Help
Founded in 1984 by a group of community volunteers in the face of the AIDS crisis, DAP Health is an internationally renowned humanitarian healthcare organization. In 2013, the non-profit expanded its scope to care for all marginalized people, regardless of HIV status.
Our goal is to improve the overall health of our entire community—especially the disenfranchised—by providing culturally competent, quality primary and preventative health care and social services on one campus. These include medical care, dentistry, and programs related to mental health, substance use recovery, and sexual wellness.
The expertise, infrastructure, reputation, and donor base atop which DAP Health’s considerable success stands was bolstered by our more recent involvement providing for all those devastated in countless ways by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thanks to 38 years of caring for people both directly and indirectly affected not only by the HIV/AIDS epidemic but by the proliferation of other public health emergencies, we have the physical and intellectual resources, the desire, and—most importantly—the imagination to effect even greater positive change in our beloved Coachella Valley community and beyond.
Vision Forward is our roadmap to building a healthier tomorrow for more of our neighbors
The next epidemic hasn’t yet been named. Just as DAP Health met HIV, HEP C, STIs and COVID head-on, its team of infectious disease specialists stands ready to protect our community’s health and well-being. With 53% of our community not knowing their HIV status because they’ve never been tested, our commitment to ending the HIV epidemic and caring for individuals living with HIV will never waver.
Comprehensive healthcare access remains uneven. It’s estimated that 46% of our community lives below the federal poverty level. In communities of color, communities living in poverty, and in the LGBTQIA+ community, DAP Health is removing barriers to care to build a healthier tomorrow.
The mental health crisis requires an intervention. DAP Health is doubling its capacity to deliver life-saving access to psychologists, therapists, and psychiatrists. We know mental health is health, but too many individuals experience shame in asking for the care they need and face challenges when they need it most.
Addiction is a serious problem that requires a therapeutic solution. Substance use affects the individual and the family that loves them. DAP Health’s patient-centered model of care combines primary care, mental health, outpatient care, and traditional 12-step support groups that meet individuals where they are.
Housing is healthcare. The housing and rental market have made shelter unaffordable for too many hard-working individuals. Some 2,300 of our neighbors experience homelessness on any given night. DAP Health is adding 61 additional affordable housing units to its campus, increasing its housing capacity by 75%.
The $6.5 million we will raise over the next three years will permit DAP Health to first complete its physical expansion, which is to include a central registration area, a larger pharmacy, expanded dental clinic, expanded on-campus sexual wellness clinic, community meeting spaces, a pavilion connecting the main building with the newly acquired and expanded medical clinic building, new off-campus sexual wellness clinics, 61 new affordable housing units, and a café to provide workforce development opportunities.
The next step will be to hire the clinicians, social workers, administrators, and support staff required to expand access for—and services to—those who continue to knock on DAP Health’s door daily in search of either lifesaving help or simply stellar primary medical care. Our hope is to never turn anyone away.
A snapshot of the culminated Vision 2020 and Vision Forward> combined looks like this:
How YOU Can Help
Over the last 38 years, DAP Health would never have been able to achieve all it has on behalf of our community were it not for the continued, generous support of people like you—compassionate humanitarians. Please trust that you have DAP Health’s endless gratitude.
If you would like to help us reach the culmination of Vision Forward >, please review the inserts itemizing the naming opportunities across our new campus and consider your bold investment to help us grow to care for an additional 15,000 of our neighbors in the Coachella Valley.
On behalf of DAP Health’s board of directors, staff, volunteers, and clients, thank you in advance for your time and consideration.
Your Gift Will be Matched
You may make a named gift to fund a particular need, or a general contribution to uplift the entire campaign. Your gift will be doubled by a special matching
fund established by fellow DAP Health donors. Please be as generous as your means allow. And I welcome you to contact James Lindquist, Director of Development, with any questions, at 760-656-8413 or [email protected].