Despite the name it’s had since being incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 1984, Desert AIDS Project in Palm Springs expanded its service purview beyond HIV care when it became a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) “Look-Alike” in April 2012. But that doesn’t mean D.A.P. is any less concerned with HIV/AIDS than it has been… Read more »
HIV/AIDS
Robert hadn’t even celebrated his 30th birthday when he was told he had months to live…or a few years at best…and that he should get his affairs in order. Just as he’d barely begun a promising career and had been settling into a life he loved, everything was suddenly turned upside down. Robert’s doctors still… Read more »
Desert AIDS Project believes in the body’s ability to care for itself and offers a variety of programs that aid that process. World AIDS Day on December 1 was a time to remind clients, volunteers, board members, and donors that D.A.P. offers comprehensive compassionate care to treat the body and the soul. On this holiday… Read more »
December 1, 2014 marked the 27th annual observation of World AIDS Day. Its purpose has always been to raise awareness, increase activism, foster prevention, support the HIV/AIDS community and most poignantly, commemorate the 39 million people worldwide who have died from AIDS. One would think that two-and-a-half decades are a sufficiently long time to accomplish… Read more »
You may have seen the odd acronym “PrEP” among the alphabet soup of medical terms so prevalent today. It stands for “pre-exposure prophylaxis” against HIV infection and is a very simple therapy: a daily dose of Truvada, the highly effective antiviral medication used since 2004 to treat patients who are already HIV-positive. Actually, Truvada is… Read more »
Unless you are living with it or close to someone who has, you may not realize that 33 years have passed since AIDS was first identified. That was June 1981, when The New York Times reported an ominous “gay cancer” spreading among homosexual men. But few beyond gay activists and rogue doctors paid attention. There… Read more »
While the Coachella Valley has a higher than average population of people living with HIV, perhaps more revealing is that within that group, approximately 70% are between the ages of 49 and 65 – bell curve baby boomers. And the kicker is that we’re still here at all. During the worst of this 33-years-and-counting epidemic,… Read more »
The Coachella Valley has two prominent demographic characteristics: a larger-than-average senior population and one of the highest per capita rates of persons living with HIV/AIDS. You may know one of those people, whether they know their status or not. Nationally, one in five people who have HIV are unaware of it; that rate is likely… Read more »
Many of us remember that chilling day in 1981 when the first diagnosis of AIDS was reported. It wasn’t long before this international epidemic took the world by storm as medical professionals and researchers worked feverishly to determine the cause, treatment and effect. Here in the Coachella Valley, a small group of concerned volunteers joined… Read more »