The Alliance for Healthier Communities Board of Directors and staff join the Hamilton Urban Core Community Health Centre (HUCCHC) team in mourning the passing of Executive Director, Denise Brooks. For more than 25 years, Denise led HUCCHC and played a crucial role in Ontario’s community health sector. She was a titan of the sector, her voice and vision will be greatly missed.
Denise will be remembered for her unwavering commitment to health equity. Throughout her career, Denise worked to improve life for the most marginalized among us. She was committed to leaving no-one behind. In more recent years, Denise led important work addressing social inequality in Hamilton and highlighting the detrimental impact of poverty on health, including Hamilton’s Community Truth Hearings on poverty and equity.
As an organization, the Alliance owes a great debt to Denise Brooks, who in her tenure as the chair of our Board of Directors played a critical role in the development of sector-wide responses to systemic and structural inequality, particularly anti-Black racism. Today, the Alliance prides itself on its strong institutional commitment to health equity. Much of this strong focus would not exist were it not for the role Denise played during her tenure as Board chair and her mentorship of the Alliance executive leads. Denise’s bold voice and leadership will be missed.