“It’s important to remember . . . nobody does this work alone”

^{June 16, 2026}

We are proud to announce that our Executive Director Axelle Janczur has received this year’s Alliance for Healthier Communities Denise Brooks Health Equity Award. The award celebrates individuals who have made outstanding contributions to poverty reduction, advancing health equity and social justice, while demonstrating a strong commitment to anti-oppression and anti-racism.

This award recognizes Axelle’s steadfast commitment to systemic change and advocacy aimed at dismantling barriers to equitable health. A determined leader and collaborator, throughout her career she has championed policies and practices that challenge discrimination and address the root causes of health inequities.

At Access Alliance, we’ve witnessed the powerful and lasting impact Axelle’s contributions have had on our clients, communities, and the wider sector. Her 25+ years of mission-driven leadership have been instrumental in strengthening our impact, and stand as a testament to her capacity for transformative change. We’re so pleased and proud that her steadfast work as a champion of health equity has been recognized with this award.

Axelle’s acceptance speech

“Thank you so much, I am really happy to be here. I won’t compete with these illustrious presenters and guests by trying to sound smart, nor will I rattle off a long list of achievements from a long career. These achievements are not mine, but rather the result of the effort of teams, colleagues, allies, communities—all organizing, working collaboratively, building platforms, resistance, campaigns.

How many marches, position papers, deputations? How many petitions, how many meetings with politicians, how many workshops, trainings, capacity building events, community consultations? Too many to remember. Rather I’ll just tell you a little bit about my own story—we are all shaped by our lived experiences.

I was very active during my university years, working in student politics on campus, getting student council members elected, doing educational events, fundraising, supporting freedom movements overseas. I even went to pick coffee in Nicaragua for the Sandinistas before I discovered they were a bunch of corrupt, power-hungry, narco-abetting dictators. But that’s a different conversation!!

I fell into community work by chance, volunteering as a Spanish language interpreter with a small ethnospecific agency. Coincidentally, Denise Brooks also worked for some time with a small settlement agency in Hamilton before getting into the CHC sector.

I remember the first time I interpreted at a medical appointment for a Chilean refugee, where he described his experiences of torture at the hands of the Pinochet dictatorship. I was profoundly affected by this. We all have pivotal moments in our lives, where we suddenly see clearer, and get more focused on what drives us. 

Another pivotal moment in my development as an advocate and activist was in the early 90’s—I worked on developing an employment equity program at the YWCA, back when we had employment equity legislation in this province. There I learned about systemic discrimination and oppressive structures that keep people down in a very visceral way. These systems exist high-level and on the ground, even in our own organizations, often unseen, and hard to understand their impact. I was very lucky in that I had colleagues that offered to be my mentors, and allies in my learning. This was a gift to me that I always valued.

A big influence in my life was my dad. As a member of the Labour Youth Resistance in Poland during WW2, he was captured and imprisoned in Dachau, a Nazi concentration camp, for nearly 5 years. His experiences and the people he met are stories for another day.

Despite his experiences, he was a very positive and progressive man. He always said not to think I deserved all the benefits that came with my privilege; rather, they were the random result of geography, class, education, race. I was no better or worse than anybody else in this world, and any success was in large part the result of factors I had nothing to do with. He said I had a responsibility to leverage this privilege, and be prepared to work hard for what I believed in.

It’s important to remember, always, that nobody does this work alone. We are all standing on the shoulders of others, learning from mentors and allies, from people with lived experience who face tremendous barriers and fight hard—much harder than I have ever had to fight—for dignity and equity. I am very proud that at Access Alliance, systems change and advocacy have always been a central focus of our mission.

I knew Denise Brooks. She and I were together on the board of the Alliance for a few years, back when it was the Association of Ontario Health Centres. She was feisty and outspoken and didn’t suffer fools gladly. She was also very kind and sweet, and very generous. Even after our board experience we kept in touch, we did some projects together, I visited her at Hamilton Urban Core a few times. We sent each other flowers occasionally, celebrating small wins. Because of her commitment to equity and anti-racism, she had great friends (and lots of opponents as well.) She took on politicians, funders, system leaders (even colleagues), with passion and integrity. She had grit, commitment and resilience.

I am honoured, and very touched, to receive this award. I want to thank the folks who nominated me, and I dedicate this to Denise. She was a friend and an ally to me.”

About Denise Brooks

Denise Brooks was Executive Director of the Hamilton Urban Core Community Health Centre, an inner-city agency that serves some of the city’s most vulnerable residents. 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.

In her tenure as the chair of the Alliance for Healthier Communities Board of Directors, she 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 Brooks passed away in July 2020.