You may have heard about The Future of PrEP is Now, a research project aimed at understanding the needs and preferences of Two-Spirit, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (2SGBTQ) men and non-binary folks in regards to long-acting HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) delivery. Despite the fact that oral PrEP is very effective at preventing HIV, it remains underprescribed to many equity-seeking communities.
For a few years now, our team at Clinique médicale l’Actuel has noticed an increase in patients using crystal meth. At the start of the pandemic, to address our patients’ distress and increased substance use, we secured private funding to set up a support program for our patients who use crystal meth and practise chemsex, also called PnP or party ‘n play. We also convinced the Quebec Ministry of Health and Social Services to carry out a pilot project with this population at the clinic.
A few days before ringing in the New Year, I received an email notification that got me super excited about the future of HIV prevention. I needed the boost – the omicron surge of COVID-19 was just starting to tear through communities across the country, and had even hit my own household, making for a painfully lonely holiday season just as my husband and our kids were starting the school winter break.
“Blood. It’s in you to give.” Or so the old slogan from Canadian Blood Services (CBS)* would have you believe. Of course, they have a long history of filtering who gets to give. Currently, there are many Canadians who want to give but cannot, including all HIV-negative cisgender men who’ve had sex with another man in the past three months. This includes men who are in monogamous relationships, always use pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), always use condoms during sex, and who have oral but not anal sex. This policy has long been viewed as homophobic by many community members and community-based...
HIV self-testing was approved in Canada in November 2020, largely thanks to research conducted by REACH Nexus, part of Unity Health Toronto’s Map Centre for Urban Health Solutions. But approval does not mean access – the next step is getting self-tests into the hands of people who don’t know they have HIV, and linking them to follow-up treatment and care.
Harm reduction and gay men’s HIV prevention could be considered two historic elements in our HIV response that have long stood separate from one another. Traditionally, HIV prevention with gay men focused on sexual risk, while harm reduction focused on risks associated with injection drug use. Both approaches have evolved over the decades and some might argue that safer sex is a form of harm reduction, but in the context of drug use, there has been little focus given to harm reduction in the context of gay men’s sexual health.
