Tag: Reproductive health

Supporting infant feeding by parents living with HIV in Canada

September 8, 2026 • By Molly Bannerman, Mercy Majachani, Claudia Medina and Rajesh Pisharody

For parents living with HIV, the decision about whether to breast/chest feed can be difficult, and it can be even more challenging if a family surveillance system is involved. In this blog post, we discuss family surveillance and the current guidelines on breast/chest feeding and HIV, and we offer practical steps that community and healthcare workers can take to provide families with compassionate, evidence-based support that honours and uplifts parental autonomy. Family surveillance, sometimes referred to as family policing, refers to systems that are often framed as child protection or child welfare but can monitor families in ways that impact...

U=U should mean reproductive freedom — but many fertility clinics haven’t caught up yet

December 1, 2025 • By Mona Loutfy and Amy Ly

Someone living with HIV calls a fertility clinic to ask about booking a consultation. They may have spent months planning for this moment, choosing the right time, the right support, the right words. But instead of a clear pathway to care, they are told that they need to be referred somewhere else. Or that the clinic is “not sure” whether they can provide services. Or they are met with silence on the phone while someone tries to decide how to respond. For many people living with HIV who want to build families, this is still a familiar experience. For people...

The Kotawêw Indigenous HIV/STBBI Doula Project: How kinship has guided our research journey

February 18, 2025 • By Candace Neumann, Melissa Morris and Rusty Souleymanov

The Kotawêw Indigenous HIV/STBBI Doula Project is a community response to the disproportionate impact of HIV and other sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STBBIs) on Indigenous women and gender-diverse people. While our work is currently in the research phase, our goal is to co-create a curriculum to train Indigenous doulas who can support community members by fostering connections to HIV/STBBI prevention and treatment services through care grounded in kinship and traditional practices. Our core team is made up of Indigenous women and Two-Spirit researchers with lived experience, and allies. The project is co-led by two Elders/Knowledge Holders, Albert McLeod and...