Bay Area Reporter - January 15, 2009
Heather Tirado Gilligan

Formed in 1977 in response to anti-gay campaigns at the time, BAPHR assumed a leading roll in advising health professionals and national organizations during the early days of the AIDS crisis. As one of the only professional groups of gay and lesbian medical students and physicians in the country at the time, BAPHR provided advice to organizations ranging from national associations of epidemiologists to the federal government. Its members served as a crucial source of recommendations from the first reports of the disease until the mid-1980s, when groups devoted to the fight against AIDS began to form across the country, according to Dr. Kent Sack, the current board president of BAPHR and one of the charter members of the organization.

"AIDS literally wiped us out. The demands came from everywhere," said Sack, explaining that "people were just burned" out by the mid-1980s.

BAPHR also suffered from internal conflicts about how to respond to the AIDS epidemic, Sack said. In 1984, the group split evenly on the issue of bathhouses in San Francisco, with half of the group arguing that they were a public health threat that should be closed, and the other half disagreeing with that assessment. The health department did order the bathhouses shuttered.

BAPHR membership dropped by one half, from 200 to 100, and has remained at roughly 100 members since then.

In 1981, the national organization now known as the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association grew out of BAPHR, according to the group's Web site.

Even with membership remaining stable for the past 25 years of the organization's existence, BAPHR's fundraising has remained strong. On January 9, when BAPHR handed out grant checks to local organizations at a reception at Davies Hospital, the organization also set an impressive benchmark. Since 1983, the inception of the foundation arm of BAPHR, the group has granted over $1 million to help local groups provide better health care and wellness programs to the LGBT community.

Grant recipients at the reception said they were already feeling the strain of last year's economic meltdown in their fundraising efforts.

"We are absolutely impacted by the financial crisis, absolutely," said Charles Learner, team leader of the Pride and Joy program at Family Builders, an organization that finds families for LGBT foster children.

Family Builders was granted $7,000 to fund the Pride and Joy program, which focuses on keeping these youth from becoming homeless.

"Grants that were to end in 2010 are being discontinued now," noted Leslie Ewing, executive director of the Pacific Center in Berkeley, one of the few organizations in the East Bay offering services directed at LGBT youth, which also received a $7,000 grant. By the end of 2009, Ewing expects government funding for health care organizations to drop by over 50 percent, and for programs dealing with HIV/AIDS to be particularly hard hit by funding cuts.

Grant recipients also noted that, unexpectedly, individual donations to their organizations have increased in quantity, though they have decreased in the dollar amount given. Pacific Center's end of year appeal netted the organization more donations than in 2007, Ewing said.

The Rainbow Community Center of Contra Costa County, which was granted $7,000 to fund a program designed to assist young transgender people in transition, also saw a rise in individual donations, according to Ben-David Barr, the center's executive director.

"The silver lining of Prop 8 is that the community is notified that they now have to step up" said Barr, referring to the measure that eliminated same-sex marriage in California.

Other grant recipients included the AIDS Legal Referral Panel ($2,000), the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists ($3,000), Lavender Seniors ($8,000), Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center ($11,000), Positive Resource Center ($6,000), New Leaf: Services for Our Community ($6,000), Pets Are Wonderful Support ($3,000), the LGBT Resource Center at UCSF ($10,000), and the AIDS Health Project at UCSF ($8,000).

BAPHR hopes that its grant giving will raise its profile in the community and increase membership and donations, Sack said, joking that the party celebrating the million dollar mark was BAPHR's "coming out party." The organization's plans for the upcoming year include addressing transgender health issues and a new focus on developing syphilis and HIV standard guidelines.

"History is history," Sack said of BAPHR's drive to reinvent itself. "We now need to look at the future."

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