HIV

'Re-imagine everything': How U of T's Francisco Ibáñez-Carrasco helped profs adjust to online teaching

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 19:54:10 +0000

'Re-imagine everything': How U of T's Francisco Ibáñez-Carrasco helped profs adjust to online teaching

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 06/17/2021 - 15:54

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Francisco Ibáñez-Carrasco, a part-time assistant professor of learning innovation at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, says his life experiences taught him that upheaval is an opportunity to be embraced, not feared (photo by Adam Coish)

Heidi Singer

Topic

Our Community

Coronavirus

AIDS

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

HIV

Learning

LGBTQ

A longtime AIDS activist and community based researcher, Francisco Ibáñez-Carrasco was tapped to be online engagement guru at the ��Ƶ’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health last summer – just as the school was making the transition to online instruction.

The 58-year-old former Vancouverite was asked to join the school to help professors – who are often much younger than himself – learn how to teach online.

Ibáñez-Carrasco says he has heard many reasons why online education isn’t as good as in-person instruction – but he has a solution for seemingly everything. The most common complaint, he says, is that virtual experiences can’t replicate the intimacy of in-person. His response? If people can have sex online, they can engage with each other online to learn.

“It’s been an amazing opportunity to be able to stir a culture from the inside,” says Ibáñez-Carrasco. “Faculty members are embracing a new way of doing things, but the main change has been grappling [with unexpected realities.] From technical issues to worrying about privacy issues around lectures ... faculty members – no matter how established – feel very vulnerable.”

However, Ibáñez-Carrasco maintains that a little uncertainty can be a good thing – an observation supported by his own personal experience. He was a 22-year old high school teacher when he fled the fascistic dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in 1985, landing in Vancouver where he was soon handed an HIV diagnosis – a death sentence at the time.

“The physician said, ‘Well pal, you’re HIV-positive – another immigrant coming here to die of AIDS. Here’s your list of opportunistic illnesses. One of them will kill you.’”

The diagnosis was terrible, but Ibáñez-Carrasco says it freed him to think fearlessly about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He’d always loved studying, teaching and books, so eventually Ibáñez-Carrasco went back to school, earning a PhD in education from Simon Fraser University. And he wrote books.

His diagnosis also kicked off a lifelong interest in public health. Straddling the worlds of education and advocating for the sexual health of marginalized communities, his work still aims to bridge the communication gap between provider and patient.

Ibáñez-Carrasco has lived in Toronto since 2012, when he became director of education and training at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network. There, he trained 70 emerging Canadian HIV researchers and community leaders from 2009 to 2017, earning a Red Ribbon award from the Canadian Association for HIV Research in 2017. He then served as a senior research associate at the Centre for Urban Solutions at Unity Health. Days after learning U of T would pivot to online instruction in the face of COVID-19, Professor Dionne Gesink, the Dalla Lana School of Public Health’s associate dean of academic affairs, asked Ibáñez-Carrasco to join the school at the recommendation of Professor Carol Strike, who knew about his longtime leadership in online education.

“Francisco has been a ray of sunshine piercing through the storm clouds,” says Gesink, herself a sexual health researcher. “He has supported faculty and student learning, remote delivery, gamifying learning activities, alternative methods of evaluating student learning. He has coached faculty in pedagogy, and the list goes on.

“Francisco is warm and approachable, makes people feel comfortable and confident, somehow makes work playful and really helps foster a sense of community.”

Although not a traditional expert in technology, Ibáñez-Carrasco is passionate about teaching and engaging people despite barriers – whether they be technological, cultural or psychological.

He says he finds sudden change invigorating, loving the “messiness” and the freedom to create something new. That applies not just to online teaching but also the current upheaval around traditional gender and sexual identities and anti-oppressive teaching practices, he says.

“I love the complexity of queer communities. Emerging communities of transgender, nonbinary folks have something to teach me. Understanding diversity was something we preached in the 80s and 90s. And now they’re in my face – good!”

His fondness for mess is rooted in childhood. Ibáñez-Carrasco was 10 when Pinochet seized power, and he remembers the fascist oppression to conform or die that descended on Chilean society.

“You had to toe the line. Everything was redacted: television, textbooks and your conversations had to be edited as such,” he recalls. “There were curfews for many years. People whispered for two reasons: when someone had cancer and when someone was involved in politics.”

Informed by that history, he has fought stigma and secrecy of all things that bring shame, including sexualities, medical conditions such as HIV and the use of drugs. “Patients understand everything if they are given the right opportunity – including patients we see as complex,” he says. “They understand very well because many are living multiple pandemics – HIV, the opioid crisis and COVID.”

Looking forward, Ibáñez-Carrasco sees huge opportunity for the field of public health – providing practitioners are willing to embrace the upheaval.

“For public health schools, it’s a golden opportunity on a silver platter,” he says. “You can re-imagine everything. In fact, we must reimagine everything: learning, research, clinical practice and policy-making. All of it has been thrown into a blender. What a magnificent opportunity.”

New book by U of T author looks at the corporate philanthropy of MˑAˑC Cosmetics and how it was done right

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 13:56:37 +0000

New book by U of T author looks at the corporate philanthropy of MˑAˑC Cosmetics and how it was done right

noreen.rasbach Fri, 08/09/2019 - 09:56

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"Generally, I've been interested in the commodification of social causes, mostly because I find it objectionable," says Andrea Benoit, academic review officer in U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

HIV

LGBTQ

A new book from ��Ƶ Press uncovers the origins of MˑAˑC Cosmetics’ corporate philanthropy around HIV/AIDS awareness and fundraising in the early 1990s.

Viva MˑAˑC: AIDS, Fashion, and the Philanthropic Practices of MˑAˑC Cosmetics traces the history of the MˑAˑC AIDS Fund, a charity established in 1994 to support people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide.

The book is written by Andrea Benoit, academic review officer in U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science and adjunct assistant professor of media studies in the Faculty of Information & Media Studies at Western University. Benoit received her bachelor's and master's degrees from U of T in English before completing her PhD in media studies at Western.

Jovana Jankovic spoke with Benoit about MˑAˑC’s corporate philanthropy, why it was unique and the historical conditions out of which it emerged.

MˑAˑC has always catered to a wider variety of customers – such as the LGBTQ community and people of colour – than other brands. How do you think this is related to the brand’s genesis in Toronto, such a diverse city?

MˑAˑC started its philanthropy in the early 1990s within a sort of perfect storm. The founders and its employees wanted to help their friends and the people around them as the AIDS epidemic was unfolding in Toronto. There was some activism already in place, along with a slightly more progressive political moment.

At the same time, we had the revitalization of the creative industries in the 1980s – in music and in the fashion scene. Toronto really felt like it might be a fashion capital, along the same lines as New York, and everybody was excited about it. There was lots of expansive thinking in that time. Creative people weren’t necessarily concerned with making a lot of money, although certainly one has to make a livelihood.

You write in your book that taking a stand like MˑAˑC did to spotlight AIDS was “defiant.” What do you think it takes for brands to take such a risk?

Well, “cause marketing” is, first of all, marketing. So, for cause marketing to be successful, it has to benefit the company. As a result, a lot of corporations probably aren't interested in being too risky. And, of course, the consumer base and the cause have to overlap in order for it to work.

There’s a tendency to play it safe – unless you’re a big company, in which case we see something like Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty.” There was a certain amount of risk in that but, at the same time, that brand was so stale that they could take that chance. And they touched a social nerve – and did it in a really interesting and imaginative way that changed that conversation.

However, what MˑAˑC did had nothing to do with marketing. They weren’t interested in that kind of promotional activity. They just did what they felt was right, and they did it according to their own logic, their own sets of practices. They didn't really care what people thought.

There's no question that the brand and the AIDS advocacy have become mutually beneficial since then, and they would say there's nothing wrong with that. But they have maintained their position that the MˑAˑC AIDS Fund is not a promotional activity writ large, and they still don't really advertise it all that much.

How did you get interested in corporate philanthropy as a research area? And could you talk to us about some contemporary examples?

Generally, I've been interested in the commodification of social causes, mostly because I find it objectionable. The intersection of social justice with consumer culture is pretty disingenuous, especially since capitalism itself is founded so clearly on social inequity and exploitation.

But corporations rely on consumers thinking that they’re doing good things. So as an intellectual inquiry, I wanted to try to understand these things better. When I started to explore this topic, I couldn't find anything good to say about it – which can be distressing and discouraging, to think that everything's terrible. But when I started to investigate MˑAˑC, I realized that something very different was happening. Their story didn't follow along the same patterns I was seeing with other corporations. So that was the basis of this project.

Gillette, for instance, is actually doing something pretty controversial and risking a pretty solid consumer base by talking about issues like “toxic masculinity” that are uncomfortable for people. They’re trying to change this conversation in a substantial way.

Whether it will be successful or not remains to be seen. That’s why advertising history is so interesting, because you can’t always assess the impact in the moment.

Pride month just took place and here in Toronto we have one of the biggest Pride celebrations in the world. What does Pride mean to you and how do you celebrate?

I've always considered myself an ally. And I'm thrilled that my book came out during Pride month at the Glad Day Bookshop, the oldest independent LGBTQ bookstore in Toronto.

It's interesting to see how Pride has become so all-encompassing. I used to live in the [Church-Wellesley] village, and Pride really did start as something very small and very determined. I think it’s important for younger people to understand the history of Pride – it's not just a month of partying. It comes from a long history of people living and working and dying to achieve equality and safety in their lives and on the streets. That gets missed when you go to the mall and every store has rainbows and Pride t-shirts.

So, I'm hopeful that my book offers a little bit of information about people who were trying to do something at a time when it was risky, when their friends were dying, when people were very antagonistic and aggressively against advocacy for LGBTQ folks and terrified of AIDS. I'm glad that my book might help people understand that history a little bit. History is important.

Research on chickenpox virus paves way for promising HIV vaccine

noreen.rasbach — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 20:20:01 +0000

Research on chickenpox virus paves way for promising HIV vaccine

noreen.rasbach Mon, 02/04/2019 - 15:20

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HIV-1 budding (in green) from cultured white blood cells (image by C Goldsmith via Wikmimedia Commons)

Topic

Research & Innovation

A study led by researchers at the ��Ƶ and the University of Manitoba has brought science one step closer to using the chickenpox virus to develop a vaccine against HIV.

Scientists have long seen the chickenpox virus in vaccine form as a potential “vector” or carrier to deliver HIV genes and generate immunity to HIV, but safety concerns about this approach have limited further advances.

The new study is the first to show that chickenpox vaccine does not trigger an unwanted “HIV-welcoming” immune state in the genital mucosa – as was seen in a previous clinical trial that used a similar viral vector – or in the bloodstream.

“Our study investigated an important safety concern that posed a barrier to this vaccine strategy,” said Kelly MacDonald, a professor of immunology at U of T and of internal medicine, immunology and medical microbiology at the University of Manitoba. “The stage is now set to test a chickenpox-based HIV vaccine.”

The Journal of Clinical Investigation published the paper online on Jan. 22.

The researchers conducted their study in Kenya, a country severely affected by the HIV epidemic. Study participants were 44 healthy, HIV-negative women who were at low risk for HIV exposure and tested positive for immunity to chickenpox.

Lead author and U of T post-doctoral researcher Catia Perciani worked with researchers from the Kenya AIDS Vaccine Initiative-Institute of Clinical Research at the University of Nairobi to give study participants a high-dose vaccine against only chickenpox virus. The researchers then tested each participant’s blood, as well as mucosal cells from the cervix and rectum at intervals of four, eight and 12 weeks.

The key finding was that 12 weeks post-vaccination, there was no significant difference in the frequency of activated HIV target cells, compared to pre-vaccination.

The study also showed that the vaccine vigorously boosted the women’s existing immunity to chickenpox, in their bloodstream but also in the genital area. This immune response in the genital area, where HIV infection first occurs, is a highly positive finding for the HIV vaccine concept, MacDonald said.

A blended chickenpox and HIV vaccine would take advantage of the fact that chickenpox virus undergoes silent cycles of reactivation in the body. Each time it “wakes up” from its dormant state, the body’s immunity quickly controls it and the immunity is boosted.

“The idea is to insert HIV genes into the chickenpox virus like extra beads on a necklace. As the Varicella genes or ‘beads’ are made into protein, the HIV genes also get made into proteins and therefore stimulate immunity to HIV without the risk of giving the actual HIV virus,” MacDonald said. “We expect that each time the chickenpox virus is reactivated, it will also refresh immunity to HIV.”

MacDonald said the next steps are to continue testing the vaccine strategy using non-human primates and start developing a chickenpox virus-vectored HIV vaccine for a clinical trial in humans.

The study was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

With a file from the University of Manitoba

U of T researcher looks for ways to protect the brain from HIV-related damage

noreen.rasbach — Wed, 28 Nov 2018 15:37:00 +0000

U of T researcher looks for ways to protect the brain from HIV-related damage

noreen.rasbach Wed, 11/28/2018 - 10:37

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Declines in cognitive function are "a serious complication of HIV," says Professor Reina Bendayan (photo by Steve Southan)

Topic

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Research & Innovation

Subheadline

During Professor Reina Bendayan’s career, she has seen HIV/AIDS evolve from a universally fatal infection to a highly manageable chronic disease. Her research into HIV’s effects on the brain is addressing an important, yet poorly understood complication of the disease.

When she began her career at the ��Ƶ in the late 1980s, HIV/AIDS was a major public health crisis. With her expertise in drug transport and distribution, she began to study how new HIV drugs cross biological membranes to get access to tissues and treat the infection. She was especially interested in the brain.

“When I started, HIV-associated dementia was recognized as a very common complication of the illness,” says Bendayan, a professor in the department of pharmaceutical sciences at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy. “People were dying from it.”

Antiretroviral therapies, developed in the 1990s, transformed care and life expectancy for people with HIV. “Most patients with HIV present undetectable viral loads in their blood, but they aren’t cured,” she says. In fact, because many of these drugs do not cross the blood-brain barrier, the virus can remain almost untouched in the brain.

While HIV-associated dementia is no longer a major cause of death, as many as 50 per cent of people with HIV still experience declines in cognitive function that impact their quality of life. “As people live much longer, it’s a serious complication of HIV,” Bendayan says.

In recent years, Bendayan and her team have been exploring how the virus causes inflammation in the brain, which, over time, damages neurons and causes complications known as HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND), which can include memory loss and poor co-ordination.

Using rodent models of the disease, she and her team identified that a transcription factor called PPAR helps to block inflammation in the brain. They are now testing whether drugs that activate PPAR can counteract the damaging effects of HIV in the brain, reduce inflammation and perhaps even target the virus directly. One of the drugs they are testing, rosiglitazone, is also used to treat Type 2 diabetes, which may allow it to be translated relatively quickly into patient care.

Bendayan says that the goal is to have a drug that is safe for long-term use and that can penetrate the brain effectively to treat both the virus and associated inflammation.

Understanding how HIV affects the brain is critical for the aging population of people with HIV/AIDS in North America and for those in developing countries where the virus is still a health crisis. “In Sub-Saharan Africa and India it is still an acute problem, and we’re seeing a rise of infection in several countries, including Russia,” says Bendayan. “In North America, HIV infection is very well controlled, but globally it remains a major problem.”

'What type of physician do I want to be?': U of T researcher on bringing a social justice lens to her clinical work

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 17:37:35 +0000

'What type of physician do I want to be?': U of T researcher on bringing a social justice lens to her clinical work

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 07/13/2018 - 13:37

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Dr. Adrienne Chan, an infectious disease specialist, has treated patients during some of the biggest epidemics in recent history, including the 2003 SARS outbreak in Toronto (photo by Ian Brown)

Brianne Tulk

Topic

Global Lens

Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty of Medicine

HIV

Sunnybrook Hospital

University Health Network

Dr. Adrienne Chan has made a difference to lives around the world. An infectious disease specialist, Chan treated some of Toronto’s first SARS patients during the 2003 outbreak when she was a third-year resident. Since then, she has established public health programs in southern Africa and helped get 13,000 patients in Malawi on antiretroviral therapy for HIV. In 2014, she worked with the World Health Organization to provide care to Ebola patients and survivors in Sierra Leone.

Today she is an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, staff physician at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and the recipient of the department of medicine’s inaugural award for humanism in medicine. The award recognizes a faculty member who exemplifies a deep and abiding commitment to humanism in health care. Humanism is understood to be an acknowledgment of other human beings as individuals with autonomy, unique backgrounds, values and perspectives, and a commitment to address issues of inclusion, equity and social justice.

Chan sat down with U of T's Brianne Tulk to talk about how being on the front lines of major outbreaks solidified her commitment to equity and social justice, and how it has informed what humanism in medicine means to her.

You’ve been present for some of the biggest epidemics in recent history. Working with patients affected by SARS, Ebola and AIDS, what has this taught you about patient care?

It taught me how interconnected we are globally and that my role as a physician has to extend beyond patient care, keeping that global framework in mind. All kinds of complex and interconnected social, economic and environmental risk factors contribute to the emergence and spread of disease, and I think we have to actively engage in addressing those factors as part of the care we provide for patients.

Those experiences were particularly eye-opening for me with respect to the extremely negative effects of fear, denial and complacency, as well as the impacts of stigma and resource inequity on patient outcomes. You can’t have those experiences and not think deeply about the intersection of health and human rights. In particular, contrasting patient care in the settings where I worked in Africa with those in Canada has taught me the importance of bringing a social justice lens to my clinical work.

You were very early in your career when you treated some of the first patients in the SARS outbreak in 2003. What effect did this have on you?

It had a profound effect on me – to the point where I didn’t really talk about it that much for several years afterwards because I was still trying to process what happened.

At the time, I think the serendipity of being on call on the wrong day, at the wrong time, afforded me a unique opportunity that most post-graduate trainees would not have: to actively participate in the health system outside of pure clinical care. Working at the outset of the outbreak in Toronto meant that I was exposed, for the first time, to how organizations make decisions in real time to unique situations, how the public health system interfaces with the clinical care system, and also exposed me to aspects of program management, field epidemiology and outward facing public communication. It was kind of a baptism by fire on how to put out fires, when no one is totally sure about what’s causing the fire.

Reflecting in hindsight, it also taught me a lot about the kind of physician I wanted to be, by seeing the unexpected and human ways that both my peers and more senior health-care providers responded. It was probably the first time where I really asked myself: What type of physician do I want to be when an extraordinary circumstance happens? What does being a physician mean to me? How do I manage the effects of decisions that I make when the outcomes of those decisions affect more than just an individual but may affect the community? And how does the answer to all of these questions impact on the people I care about in my personal life?

What does humanism in medicine mean to you?

It’s funny because I was just reading an article in the Guardian on design where the designer said that a humanist approach to design takes an “inside-out approach and puts the person at the heart of the space.” I think that is a lovely way to also conceptualize humanism in medicine. We are trained to look at patients from the outside in, starting with “inspection” first and then moving by layers inward to make a diagnosis and come up with a treatment plan, using a complex system of pattern recognition. A humanist approach reminds us that, as front-line care providers. we should start instead by considering what well-being or health means to each patient individually and what they value, and consequently to respect that in our recommendations and services.

How would you describe your approach to person-centred care?

I always ask myself – and tell my patients this is what I am thinking – when faced with a clinical decision: Knowing what I know, what would I want to be done for myself or someone I care about?

I have to say that having the time to think about these questions makes me realize that I probably need to be the first person to try harder to take an inside-out approach. I think we all know this intuitively and aspire to practice this way, but in the reality of the busy day-to-day controlled chaos of clinical practice, it is often the first thing we lose sight of because of the mental demands of real-time clinical decision making and also the hectic nature of operationalizing patient care.

What inspired you to pursue a career in infectious diseases?

Definitely some of the patients that I interacted with during my formative years with infectious disease-related clinical issues made a deep impression on me. My experiences with the HIV epidemic just prior to the advent of combination antiretroviral therapy, and the subsequent impact of the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy, which happened in my first year of medical school, probably was also an influence. I think also having great clinical teachers in the city-wide infectious diseases division and interesting and meaningful clinical experiences helped consolidate my career choices.

What do you find most rewarding about your work?

Like everyone who provides health care, it’s having the opportunity to interact with people at what can be the most challenging times in their lives, and to try to have a positive impact. It’s certainly a privilege to have that opportunity, and I think it’s something I always remind myself on days where I am feeling a bit frustrated, harried, or stressed out – that the role we have in people’s lives is a privilege, and to always remember that.

I also love that my job has allowed me to meet with and work with incredible people – not just in Toronto, but all over the world. Whether it’s the nurses who have worked in the Anita Rachlis clinic at Sunnybrook since the beginning of the HIV epidemic, who were treating HIV patients at the beginning of the epidemic when other health-care workers were afraid to care for them, or the remarkable people who responded to SARS in Toronto or Ebola in West Africa, or the amazing team at Dignitas International and the Malawi Ministry of Health who I have worked with for over a decade in Malawi to build a strong national HIV program. I think I have been lucky to have been surrounded by such amazing people, many of whom are close friends as well as colleagues. I really feel fortunate to have colleagues whose compassion, intelligence, and work ethic inspires me to do better every day.

Sex workers and antiretroviral drugs: U of T public health experts at Canadian Conference on HIV/AIDS

ullahnor — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 20:19:51 +0000

Sex workers and antiretroviral drugs: U of T public health experts at Canadian Conference on HIV/AIDS

ullahnor Tue, 04/04/2017 - 16:19

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In October, a group of 50 women, men and trans people from across Canada who are sex workers or work with sex workers came to U of T’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health for a three-day consultation on PrEP

Nicole Bodnar

Author legacy

Nicole Bodnar

Topic

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Global

For the first time in North America, public health researchers gathered sex workers and those who work with them to discuss the pros and cons of taking antiretroviral drugs to avoid HIV infection.

The results of that discussion will be presented at the Canadian Conference on HIV/AIDS on Wednesday in Montreal. Back in October, a group of 50 people from across Canada were invited to meet with researchers from U of T’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health for a three-day consultation on the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) – a way for those who are at risk of HIV infection to reduce that risk by taking antiretroviral drugs.

“Some suggest PrEP is the new condom,” said Dan Allman, assistant professor of social and behavioural health sciences at U of T who is facilitating the Montreal presentation. “While PrEP won’t prevent syphilis, gonorrhea or other sexually transmitted infections, the evidence is strong that despite side-effects, when taken properly, PrEP can work to help prevent individuals from acquiring HIV.”

Allman led the October consultation as part of the project, PrEP in the context of sex work: possibilities and limitations, which was funded by the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Gilead Sciences Canada, Inc. He worked with Andrew Sorfleet, president of the Triple-X Workers’ Solidarity Association of B.C. to shape the consultation agenda.

“I found a set of guidelines that suggested people involved in commercial sex should be prescribed PrEP, yet there had been no opportunity for consultation or input from sex workers,” said Sorfleet during his opening remarks at the consultation.

Sex workers are one marginalized group that has inequitable access to health services. Indigenous people, racialized communities and those in the LGBTQ+ community also face equity issues, notably barriers related to access to prevention, care, treatment and support. Many of these issues were discussed during the consultation by people on the front lines, as well as community outreach workers, social service programmers, health-care providers and advocates from more than 20 sex worker-directed organizations and peer-run programs from across Canada.

“It was validating to see how attuned to the health implications, good and bad, our group was,” said Allman, who described the consultation as a form of education and capacity building, not as research.

Allman said that the consultation design was in keeping with the World Health Organization-led Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion because it “started where the people are.”

“It is part of an active movement in global health that recognizes the important work that excluded communities can have in reducing HIV infections through innovative approaches to health, harm and well-being associated with HIV and AIDS,” said Allman.

At the Montreal presentation, the consultation team will premiere a comprehensive report and video, developed for community members as well as public health, policy and research practitioners so that they too can more effectively and respectfully engage sex workers in meaningful dialogue.

Allman is hopeful that through the process and consultation, participants are empowered to take what they learned about HIV prevention and PrEP back to their communities.

U of T researcher co-authors landmark report: calls Canadian newspaper coverage of HIV criminalization cases racist

ullahnor — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 18:22:01 +0000

U of T researcher co-authors landmark report: calls Canadian newspaper coverage of HIV criminalization cases racist

ullahnor Thu, 12/01/2016 - 13:22

Cutline

Laura Bisaillon: "This coverage has negative effects on public opinion because it not only stigmatizes people living with HIV, it stereotypes black immigrant men living with HIV in particular” (photo by Ken Jones)

Don Campbell

Author legacy

Don Campbell

Topic

Black heterosexual immigrant men are disproportionately highlighted by Canadian mainstream newspapers covering HIV non-disclosure criminal cases, says a new report co-authored by a ��Ƶ researcher.

While black immigrant men only accounted for 15 per cent of defendants in these cases, they were the focus of 61 per cent of newspaper coverage, researchers found.

“We were surprised by the massive imbalance in coverage that focused on black immigrant men,” says Laura Bisaillon, an assistant professor in U of T Scarborough’s health studies program and one of five authors of the report.

“This coverage has negative effects on public opinion because it not only stigmatizes people living with HIV, it stereotypes black immigrant men living with HIV in particular.”

The report, “Callous, Cold and Deliberately Duplicitous,” is the first of its kind. Researchers analyzed 1,680 articles published in Canadian newspapers from 1989 to 2015. The articles focused on cases involving defendants facing criminal charges for not disclosing their HIV status before having sex.

One of the key findings in the report is that 68 per cent of newspaper articles focused on racialized defendants – with African, Caribbean and black men disproportionately represented in coverage.

“Our evidence shows that most people who face criminal charges in these cases are actually white, yet newspaper coverage focused mainly on black male defendants,” says Bisaillon.

Read the Toronto Star story on the report

The authors also discovered a cluster of coverage by Canadian newspapers on four specific men who faced HIV non-disclosure cases. Nearly half of all coverage focused specifically on the cases of these men, all of whom are black immigrants.

The report’s authors were also critical of the language used in the newspaper coverage, which they believe contributes to inflaming stereotypical and xenophobic ideas, particularly relating to black immigrant men with HIV.

“It’s upsetting to read myths masquerading as news and repeating the theme of how black men living with HIV are hypersexual, dangerous ‘others,’” says Erik Mykhalovskiy, a professor of sociology at York University and the study’s lead author.

The authors call for reform in media coverage, including having cases of HIV criminalization covered by health rather than crime reporters. They also insist that coverage about HIV-transmission use current scientific research, specifically about the negligible risk of transmitting HIV where the person has an undetectable viral load.

The authors took aim at the use of mug shots in stories and called for removing story descriptions that are “inherently racist or demonize the defendant.” They also urge media to rely on AIDS service organizations for their knowledge and insight in stories about HIV criminalization.

“Misinformation about HIV transmission contributes to fear and hostility towards people living with HIV,” says Bisaillon, whose research looks at the organization and production of knowledge about the Canadian immigration system. “I hope that these results will be used for transformative purposes to spark open and honest discussion about how the Canadian public is learning about cases of HIV criminalization.”

Engaging global communities in HIV research

sgupta — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 12:33:13 +0000

Engaging global communities in HIV research sgupta Fri, 07/04/2014 - 08:33

Cutline

Reaching hands sculpture at the Wat Rong Khun temple in Chiang Rai (all photos by Dan Allman)

Nicole Bodnar

Author legacy

Nicole Bodnar

Topic

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Research

Community-based research – it's a collaborative approach that actively includes groups of people who belong to a particular community or who have expertise in an area of community life to participate in a study as co-investigators or advisors.

“Community-based research recognizes that people and communities have tremendous lived experience that can help researchers understand what questions to ask, how to ask them, and which methods to use,” says Assistant Professor Dan Allman of the ��Ƶ's Dalla Lana School of Public Health. The School was an early adopter of this approach, particularly with respect to HIV, where researchers made sure to involve people living with HIV or people at risk of HIV infection.

“Community-based research can also help us access hard-to-reach and vulnerable communities and help translate the knowledge gained from research back to communities,” Allman says.

Allman published a paper, “Improving Ethical and Participatory Practice for Marginalized Populations in Biomedical HIV Prevention Trials: Lessons from Thailand,” in the June 20 issue of PLOS ONE that emphasizes the importance of continuing to tailor how researchers apply community-based approaches in global settings.

Working with researchers based in the U.S. and Thailand, the team interviewed policymakers, advocates and community workers in Thailand to find out how HIV prevention trials could be more participatory and more ethical. They analyzed standards of prevention and informed consent with a goal to improve guidelines for HIV prevention research to make research safer, and provide more public good.

Allman says that much can be learned from Thailand’s HIV community.

“In the past, entire HIV research trials were shut down because research participants felt they were duped by researchers,” says Allman, noting that stakeholders in Thailand tend to be very community-minded, and that Thailand’s HIV community is very knowledgeable and generous with that knowledge.

In the study, Allman found that in order to improve HIV prevention trials in Thailand, more attention is needed to ensure greater community involvement and inclusion.

”The study’s findings are relevant to the Canadian setting too, given the country’s multicultural mosaic,” says Allman, adding that as leaders in community-based research, public health researchers in Canada uniquely celebrate cultural diversity.

“The lessons learned from this global health research are applicable here at home too where marginalized populations — such as gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, injecting drug users and Aboriginal peoples — continue to be disproportionately impacted by HIV.”

Nicole Bodnar is a writer with the ��Ƶ's Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

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