As a company, Desert Mountain Medicine recognizes the deep inequities, systemic marginalization, and lack of representation within the wilderness medicine and outdoor industries. We believe the foundational skills of excellent medical care – empathy, compassion, respect, self-awareness, ethical conduct, and leadership – also form the foundation for creating a better world. As a leader in wilderness medicine education, we have the opportunity and privilege to take action to strengthen equitable access, increase representation, and foster belonging within our classrooms and industry-wide. Find information below about our diversity, equity, and belonging programming, and read about DMM’s internal actions to improve our company and world here.
DMM + Lake County Community Fund
Desert Mountain Medicine is fiscally sponsored by Lake County Community Fund to increase access to belonging programming and ensure every donation is tax deductible. Learn about our initiatives below, and please consider supporting diversity, equity, and belonging in wilderness medicine education by making a donation here.
Please add a note in the notes section of your donation if you would like your gift to go to a specific program.
Dollars are not the only way to make an impact! Reach out to [email protected] to explore meaningful ways to make a non-monetary contribution and join the work.
DMM’s commitments to our contributors:
- Transparency – donors receive an annual financial report detailing how funds were spent and the financial standing of funded programming
- Ethic – The mission, programming information, and organizational capacity is shared with the donor so an informed decision can be made concerning a donation’s intended purpose and impact. If DMM believes it cannot reasonably use the donor’s contribution to make the desired impact, DMM will recommend a more appropriate organization for the donor to make an impact with.
- Communication – donors can expect a professional relationship with the staff overseeing donated funds based on honesty, transparency, respect, and a shared focus on making a specific impact. Donors receive confirmation that their funds were used for the express purposes intended by the donor.
- Privacy & recognition – Donors can expect their information to remain confidential to the extent provided by law, and may request anonymity or recognition in alignment with their comfort. Donors can expect to be publicly acknowledged and appropriately celebrated, unless other requests are made, for their contribution, but should understand and accept that we first celebrate and elevate the communities being served.
High School Wild Med Initiative
A Wilderness First Aid (WFA) certification for every graduating high school senior in Colorado, earned through their school’s Health, Wellness, or Physical Education curriculum at no extra cost to students – that’s the goal of the High School Wild Med Initiative. DMM’s HSWMI strives to reduce barriers to underserved Colorado youth accessing safe wilderness experiences and outdoor industry career development. To date, this initiative has reached 20 school districts and certified more than 900 high school students across Colorado! New in 2023, all HSWMI schools receive a 15% per-student discount paid for by DMM.
Learn more about the High School Wild Med. Initiative or donate to support wilderness medicine education in Colorado high schools
Women’s Wild Med Program (WWMP)
The WWMP offers wilderness medicine courses for women, taught by women. We welcome all women and girls — transgender and cisgender —as well as non-binary people who identify as a member of the women’s community. WWMP is about women empowering each other to go higher and further in the outdoors, while feeling safer and more confident.
Since establishing the program in 2019, we’ve proudly donated $6,000 in scholarships to WWMP participants. Learn more about the WWMP and donate to contribute to WWMP student scholarships.
WWMP scholarship is closed for the spring. The fall scholarship cycle will open July 1. Scholarships are awarded twice a year for courses running in the Spring and Fall.
Aventura Más
Imagine the transformative power of learning in your native language. DMM partners with Latinx-serving organizations to develop bilingual instructors and offer Spanish language wilderness medicine courses. Aventura Más offers the only entirely Spanish language wilderness medicine courses in Colorado, complete with all textbooks, materials, and instruction in Spanish. Reach out to [email protected] to learn how to partner with DMM to offer a Spanish course in 2024 or donate to support increasing access to wilderness medicine education to native Spanish speakers.
Just Wilderness BIPOC & LGBTQ+ Scholarship Program
Desert Mountain Medicine commits to increasing representation within the wilderness medicine community and thereby supporting a more just wilderness experience for all people. The BIPOC/LGBTQ+ Scholarship Program creates funded pathways for BICOP and/or LGBTQ+ students to take a DMM wilderness medicine course, as well as for qualified outdoor and medical professionals who identify within the BICOP and/or LGBTQ+ communities to join our instructor team and work alongside us to deliver kind, compassionate, and academically rigorous wilderness medicine education. Learn more about becoming an instructor or donate to the Just Wilderness BIPOC & LGBTQ+ Scholarship Program.
The Just Wilderness scholarship is closed for the spring. The fall scholarship cycle will open July 1. Scholarships are awarded twice a year for courses running in the Spring and Fall.