Canada supports community-based projects addressing HIV, other sexually transmitted infections

eAwazHealth

Ottawa – The Government of Canada is committed to working with partners and stakeholders across the country in support of the global goal of ending viral hepatitis, HIV and other sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STBBI) as public health threats by 2030. The contribution of community-based organizations is central to Canada’s ability to achieve these targets.

Projects funded by the HIV and Hepatitis C Community Action Fund (CAF) and Harm Reduction Fund (HRF) take an integrated approach to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of prevention initiatives for these infections, along with other sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections.

HIV and Hepatitis C Community Action Fund

Through the CAF, a total of 15 nationally-focused projects are receiving $41,875,763 in funding.

Project: National Sexually Transmitted and Blood-Borne Infection Knowledge Broker
Funding: $19,500,000
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Recipient: Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange (CATIE)
Project Details: The project will expedite the translation of STBBI-related knowledge into frontline policies, practices and programs that affect key populations across Canada. It will provide a comprehensive collection of evidence-informed educational tools and resources, as well as capacity building opportunities for public health and healthcare professionals, frontline service providers, community-based educators and navigators, and policy and program decision-makers.

Project: Keeping Our Fires: Incarnating Indigenous Voices. Wise Practices. Caring Communities.
Funding: $2,500,000
Location: Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan
Recipient: CAAN Communities, Alliances & Networks
Project Details: The project will focus on ceremony and storytelling to address the HIV, HCV, and STBBI realities that Indigenous Peoples face. CAAN will work with individuals, organizations, and decision-makers to gather and prepare knowledge bundle resources, applying Indigenous ways of knowing and doing, and decolonizing approaches to creating STBBI evidence.

Project: Optimizing Combination Prevention of HIV/STBBI Among GBT2Q in Canada
Funding: $2,200,000
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia
Recipient: Community-Based Research Centre Society (CBRC)
Project Details: This national bilingual project will increase access and uptake of HIV and STBBI health services among gay, bisexual, queer, other men who have sex with men (cis and trans), and Two-Spirit people (GBT2Q). The project will strengthen the knowledge and capacity of healthcare professionals, policy and decision-makers, and GBT2Q community members through culturally appropriate knowledge products, community and stakeholder events, and digital/social marketing content and campaigns.

Project: Advance Community Alliance ‘2.0’: Optimizing Combination Prevention for GBT2Q+ People
Funding: $2,142,855
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia
Recipient: Community-Based Research Centre Society (CBRC)
Project Details: This project aims to improve the accessibility and uptake of STBBI health services among gay, bisexual, queer, and other men who have sex with men (cis and trans), and Two-Spirit people (GBT2Q) in Canada. Key activities will include community member-led projects; regional communities of practice to better coordinate STBBI health services; and cultural competence and safety trainings with healthcare and social service providers.

Project: Integrated National HIV Prevention Strategy for ACB People in Canada
Funding: $2,000,000
Location: Toronto and Ottawa, Ontario; Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta
Recipient: Africans in Partnership Against AIDS ($248,358); The Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention of Metropolitan Toronto (BlackCAP) [$248,358]; AIDS Committee of Ottawa ($248,358); Committee for Accessible AIDS Treatment ($248,358); HIV Network of Edmonton Society ($248,358); The SafeLink Alberta Society ($248,358); and Women’s Health in Women’s Hands ($509,852)
Project Details: This project uses an evidence and practice based approach to improve access to HIV prevention for sub-populations within African, Caribbean and Black (ACB) communities across Canada through education, community mobilization, increased access to HIV testing and prevention technologies, and barrier reduction for care.

Project: Preventing STBBI Among Marginalized Youth
Funding: $2,000,000
Location: Ottawa, Ontario
Recipient: Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights/Action Canada pour la Santé et les Droits Sexuels
Project Details: This project will increase testing for STBBI among marginalized youth through a social marketing initiative. Each campaign will entail regional partnerships and research to address the unique contexts, barriers and motivators that affect testing rates among marginalized young people.

Project: Engaging Community to Scale and Evaluate Stigma Reduction Interventions
Funding: $1,999,159
Location: Ottawa, Ontario
Recipient: Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA)
Project Details: This project will support professionals and organizations across Canada to implement and evaluate professional development for health and social service professionals in their respective communities, and to facilitate structural change within select organizations. This project will contribute to increasing health and social service professionals’ knowledge of stigma and the intersections between STBBI stigma and other forms of oppression.

Project: Building on Lessons Learned: Culturally Safe Responses to STBBI
Funding: $1,682,640
Location: Gatineau, Quebec
Recipient: Native Women’s Association of Canada
Project Details: This project will develop sustainable, evidence-based, and culturally relevant HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) interventions for Indigenous women in federal correctional institutions. The project aims to reduce stigma/discrimination towards STBBI, addictions, substance use, users and harm reduction while recognizing the colonial history of Indigenous Canadians.

Project: STBBI, HIV, Hep C Innovations for a New Era (Shine)
Funding: $1,500,000
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Recipient: Realize/Réalise
Project Details: This project aims to provide policy and program decision- makers and stakeholders across Canada an increased understanding of the treatment and care needs of people aging with HIV, older adults and people who live physical/cognitive/intellectual or other disabilities.

Project: The Canadian Alliance in HIV and HCV Knowledge to Action (K2A)
Funding: $1,500,000
Location: Ottawa, Ontario
Recipient: Canadian Association for Global Health / Association canadienne pour la santé mondiale ($750,000); Canadian Association for HIV Research / L’Association Canadienne de Recherche sur le VIH ($750,000)
Project Details: This project will work to increase the application of the Program Science framework (a framework that ensures public health programs drive research based on field-level challenges and experiences) among community members, public health professionals/practitioners, service providers and researchers to prevent new infections and improve the health and well-being of people affected by STBBI in communities across Canada.

Project: Sexual Health Education to Prevent STBBI Among Key Youth Populations
Funding: $1,495,000
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Recipient: Sex Information and Education Council of Canada/Le Conseil du Canada d’Informations et Education Sexuelles
Project Details: This project will increase the capacity of educators to provide effective culturally safe, stigma-free STBBI prevention education to key populations of youth. Project activities will be guided by working groups, including relevant professionals from diverse fields and youth from key populations.

Project: Inuit Sexual Health Toolkit: Driving Change through Community Engagement and Action on Hep C, HIV, and other STBBI
Funding: $1,356,109
Location: Ottawa, Ontario
Recipient: Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada
Project Details: This project aims to improve the sexual health of Inuit youth in Inuit Nunangat and large Canadian urban centres by increasing their knowledge of effective evidence-based strategies to prevent HIV, hepatitis C and other STBBI, and improve their capacity, confidence and comfort to seek help, testing, treatment, care, and support. This project also aims to increase service providers’ capacity to provide culturally responsive sexual health care services.

Project: Enhancing Health and Human Rights: Creating an Enabling Environment
Funding: $750,000
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Recipient: HIV Legal Network/Réseau juridique VIH
Project Details: This project will produce analysis and culturally responsive resources that address barriers to prevention, testing, treatment, and care – including the over criminalization of people living with HIV, and structural factors undermining the health of Indigenous Peoples. The project will increase the knowledge of key populations to obtain services while strengthening the capacity of service providers to deliver services that respect and protect human rights.

Project: HIVConnect: Developing a National Peer Support Program for PLWHIV
Funding: $750,000
Location: Ottawa, Ontario
Recipient: Canadian AIDS Society/La Société canadienne du sida
Project Details: This project will build on successful local and regional peer support strategies across the country and adapt them to a nationally standardized program. This will allow organizations across Canada that do not currently have peer support programs to easily implement them through an online platform where persons living with HIV would be able to access it and undergo training modules developed and envisioned by them.

Project: Greater and More Meaningful Peer Engagement and Mentorship
Funding: $500,000
Location: Dunrobin, Ontario
Recipient: Canadian Positive People Network (CPPN) / Réseau canadien des personnes séropositives (RCPS)
Project Details: This project will focus on enhancing and fostering greater and more meaningful peer engagement and mentorship among people living with HIV to build skills, knowledge and capacity to prevent infections and improve health outcomes, with the goal to improve access to STBBI prevention, treatment, care and support programs and services.

Harm Reduction Fund

Through the HRF, a total of 3 nationally-focused projects are receiving $5,049,762 in funding.

Project: The Copper Canoe: Indigenous Harm Reduction Wise Practices
Funding: $2,301,304
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia; Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan
Recipient: Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation ($1,016,795); CAAN Communities, Alliances and Networks ($1,284,509)
Project Details: This project will increase the capacity of frontline healthcare professionals, services providers, and organizations to provide stigma-free and culturally safe harm reduction services for Indigenous people. This project will design harm reduction programs grounded in Indigenous ways of being and doing and contribute to decolonizing harm reduction services at non-Indigenous organizations.

Project: National Capacity-Building Community of Practice for Harm Reduction Services
Funding: $2,144,949
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia
Recipient: Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation
Project Details: This project will develop the capacity of frontline service providers and organizations across Canada to provide culturally appropriate, stigma-free, trauma-informed safer substance use and harm reduction services guided by people with lived and living experience.

Project: Realizing Health: Using Evidence and Rights to Enable Harm Reduction
Funding: $603,509
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Recipient: HIV Legal Network/Réseau juridique VIH
Project Details: This project will increase knowledge and strengthen capacity of people who use drugs, service providers, and policy/program decision-makers to adopt legal and programmatic measures that facilitate access to and uptake of harm reduction services that prevent STBBI and other harms. This will be accomplished by documenting findings of consultations with key experts, analyzing barriers, and translating evidence into formats that are accessible and useful to target audiences.