Conversation with David Lee, Director, APLA Health Center, CDU / MLK Medical Campus
AIDS Project Los Angeles’ on campus Director David Lee has a very interesting and varied background. He is originally from the historic town of Boley, OK, a settlement that was founded by Creek Freedmen, whose African American and mixed-race ancestors had been held as slaves of the Creek Nation at the time of the federal government’ s Indian Removal in the 1830s. By the onset of the 20th Century, Boley was a thriving landmark settlement that Booker T. Washington praised for its economic development.
Lee has been on the CDU campus for about 10 years, having been hired by Dr. Wilbert Jordan to run the PrEP HIV prevention modality demonstration project. Prior to that, he was in Peru working for an HIV vaccine research organization. Upon Lee’ s arrival at CDU, Dr. Jordan needed some assistance with his Ryan White grant and hired him to manage it. He also received a community faculty appointment eight years ago in 2016.
Since its construction, the APLA building, adjacent to the iconic MLK mural, has become a landmark edifice to traffic heading west on East 120th Street toward Compton Avenue.“ We opened this clinic in 2021 and I’ ve been the inaugural clinic director. We opened up our medical services in January of 2022, then added our dental services, and our food bank.
“ This is not our first presence on the University campus,” he noted.“ We had a standalone dental clinic and food bank mostly targeting HIV positive individuals in operation by 2009. When the administration wanted to build a new pediatric hub, we had to move. This building was built, and we subsequently moved into it.” All totaled, APLA currently has five other clinics in the greater Los Angeles area, with additional facilities planned.
“ We became an FQHC about 15 years ago, like a lot of AIDS service organizations. It’ s a federal designation that
APLA- David Lee
stands for Federally Qualified Health Center, funded by HRSA. They used to call them free clinics. Now, if you look nationwide, you will see the trend where an AIDS service organization grew into an FQHC. Because when HIV treatment became more effective, people started getting better.
With the FQHC trademark,“ We now had ways to manage HIV. We no longer limited our services to HIV. We provide medical services, as well as other services to anyone,” he added. APLA’ s particular mission is to focus on the LGBTQ community, and other underserved communities, which is most of South Los Angeles.“ We don’ t turn away patients based on their ability to pay. We take most insurances and so we don’ t turn anyone away,” he added.
If I’ m broke and on the street, how does APLA work with the community and its people in need?“ Well, we have enrollment specialists on site to see if you might be eligible for some type of assistance, or if you qualify for Medi-Cal or for any other Covered California program. California even provides health insurance for undocumented individuals. But we use a sliding scale, based on income. That could be a zero copay, a $ 5 copay, or it could be a $ 10 copay. So pretty much anybody can come to us,” he indicated.
How about wraparound services? Said Lee,“ We do offer them. A lot of our wraparound services are still targeting HIV positive individuals like our food service, which operates every Thursday. We do have case management services focused on HIV positive patients. We don’ t have a job placement program, but our case managers could certainly work with the patient and get them linked to a job placement service. We also have a housing program, and that’ s also targeting our HIV positive patients. A lot of
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 27