Individual | Inducted 2024
Inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame for his lifetime of work in health/medicine, civic involvement and leadership in the arts, Dr. Daniel S. Berger is the founder of Northstar Medical Center (Wellness Home at Northstar Healthcare) and has been a leader in HIV treatment research and a key contributor to the development of antiretroviral drug therapies over the past 30 years. Based in the Lakeview neighborhood, Northstar operates community-based programs throughout the Chicago area. Berger is a physician with expertise in LGBT medicine, especially HIV, as well as diabetes and transplant surgery. He is a dedicated researcher in HIV/AIDS and has authored more than 90 published medical abstracts and articles.
As one of the heroic early “AIDS doctors,” Berger has given personal care to thousands of patients himself and through his clinic. He was also an investigator of more than 240 research trial studies, and was among the first to research combination drug therapies in the treatment of HIV which led to the use of “drug cocktails” of protease inhibitors, which finally made HIV no longer an automatic “death sentence.”
Berger is also an art collector and author of articles and books about Queer Art, often focusing on the impact of AIDS in the art world. In Chicago he has served on more than 20 boards and advisory committees of such organizations as the Joel Hall Dancers, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Test Positive Aware Network, the Collections and Acquisitions Committee of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Leslie- Lohman Museum of Art in New York City.