It’s cold in Thompson, Manitoba. The snow squeaks and the roads are nearly pure ice; everyone drives a truck up here. I’ve arrived here to do a three-day training alongside Gina McKay from Sexuality Education Resource Centre and Carrie Pockett from Play it Safer Network. With some resources from Keewatin Tribal Council’s Adele Sweeny, we’ll be spending time with 25 people from 16 First Nations communities in the area.
Recent developments in prevention are pointing to worrying gaps in the community-based approach to HIV prevention in Canada. Perhaps we have been used to having only a single prevention technology on our books for so long – think condoms – that our ducks are not always in a row when new ones like PrEP come along. Thus potholes in our response become apparent – and none leap in to fix them. After a series of somewhat inconclusive PrEP trials, whose results were marred by adherence issues, the results of more stringent trials like the PROUD and IPERGAY studies are in,...
What happens when much of your life is built around a particular position or identity, and then that identity changes? In 1993, while in the hospital having my daughter, I was diagnosed with hepatitis C. Three years ago, I did the ribavirin and pegylated interferon treatment and cleared the virus. It’s very cool to be living virus-free after 25+ years of being positive, but it is also kind of weird.
A while back, CATIE wanted to find out what’s been done across the country to assess the frontline needs of HIV and hepatitis C service providers and service users. As the information specialist (or librarian) here at CATIE, I was duly tasked with locating whatever reports I could find.
Recently I was asked to speak at an event organized by Alex McClelland and Nicole Greenspan called “Where Do We Go From Here? AIDS Organizing, Services, Bureaucracy & the State.” The event aimed to address a number of questions, including: What are the limits of current community-based practice based on engagement with the state? Are today’s AIDS service organizations (ASOs) adequately resourced and designed to undertake their intended role? Is the role sufficient to address the ongoing and emerging HIV issues that marginalized communities face? Due to state constraints, what are the consequences on advocacy possibilities for ASOs, or ASO...
While at AIDS 2014, CATIE’s Ed Jackson and I met with a number of Australian agencies to pursue a plan to share best practices around gay men’s sexual health programming. I was already familiar with some of Australia’s powerful awareness, prevention and testing campaigns, but a closer look at the Aussie HIV response has been eye-opening and provides many useful learnings for Canada.
