2024 Paul Revere Award

Douglas M. Brooks, MSW, is a nationally recognized leader in social work and public health practice, policy and advocacy, with much of his career having been focused on HIV prevention, care and treatment and LGBTQ+ youth health and social advocacy.  In each of his positions, Mr. Brooks has used his platform to fight for marginalized communities and against the social determinants that produce unjust and inequitable health outcomes. Mr. Brooks began his career as a case manager and program coordinator through a Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) grant to the then, Provincetown AIDS Support Group, now ASGCC.  Following that work, Douglas spent time as a social work clinician and program director at Justice Resource Institute (JRI), a regional health and human service agency in New England.  Through progressively increasing roles and responsibilities he eventually led a team of professionals in managing a community health center, congregate and assisted-living housing services, and social service programs as the Senior Vice President for Community Health at JRI. While at JRI, Mr. Brooks was also part of a team that collaborated with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province Department of Health on strategies for developing partnerships between government and people living with HIV. Mr. Brooks was particularly instrumental in the development of an effective, and later nationally recognized, pre-antiretroviral treatment strategy known as the Integrated Access to Care and Treatment (I ACT) Program.   

  Mr. Brooks’ career has taken him from local community health practice to the pinnacles of the nonprofit and the corporate worlds and to the White House where he served as the Director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) under President Obama and spearheaded an update to the National HIV/AIDS Strategy. Compelled by CDC and NIH incidence and prevalence data which revealed disparate impact on certain people and places, Mr. Brooks and his team focused ONAP’s attention on the populations disproportionally affected by HIV —including gay and bisexual men of all races and ethnicities, Black and Latino communities, and people living in the Southern U.S. Prior to ONAP, Douglas was appointed to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) and was subsequently named that body’s liaison to the CDC/HRSA Advisory Committee under President Obama.   

  Building on his experience at the White House, Mr. Brooks served as the Executive Director of Community Engagement at Gilead Sciences, where he partnered with internal and external teams to create and execute programs designed to mitigate inequities in health outcomes domestically and globally. Later, as Vice President of Advancing Black Equity and Community Engagement, Mr. Brooks led an enterprise-wide strategic framework to tackle systemic issues of structural, anti-Black racism and health-based inequities. Over his time at Gilead, he helped the company manage complex issues, particularly in the field of HIV, and contributed to the design of programs that continue to make real and sustained change. Douglas was one of the architects of Gilead’s COMPASS Initiative®, a 10-year, $100 million commitment to addressing HIV in the Southern United States, and Gilead’s largest corporate giving program. He also pioneered a partnership with the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine to assess and develop recommendations for addressing racial inequities in the treatment of COVID-19 and other significant health issues.   

  In March of 2023, Mr. Brooks joined the School of Social Practice and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania as a Senior Leadership Fellow and has worked closely with the offices of the Dean and the Associate Dean for Student Services to develop programs focused on leadership and student engagement. He is also serving as a formal and informal mentor to students and an advisor to the Dean. In Spring 2024, Mr. Brooks worked as part of a Philadelphia Health Department-funded project team to engage older adults living with HIV in focus groups to understand their medical, psychosocial and social-service needs.     

  Mr. Brooks holds a BS from Lesley University and a MSW from Boston University. He has served on multiple nonprofit, government and foundation boards and advisory committees, including the Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, Chair of the Board of Trustees of AIDS United, a national advocacy/grantmaking organization and Co-Chair of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.  Douglas has recently had a homecoming of sorts as he’s joined the Board of JRI.  

Mr. Brooks has received numerous awards and honors.  In 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Fordham University. He has received the Bayard Rustin Award from the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, the Cleve Jones Leadership Award from the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and the Harlem United Community Impact Award.