Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

The objective of this planning grant is to assemble a team of researchers and community leaders tasked with addressing the relentless transmission of HIV among gay and other men who have sex with men in Ontario. Our team will be multidisciplinary and multisectoral, composed of academic and community-based researchers, clinicians and community stakeholders from across the province. In developing our research strategy, the team will be mindful of the need for a comprehensive and multi-faceted approach to HIV prevention where no single strategy is likely to have universal impact or conform to all environments. In view of this, we will focus on the creation of innovative web-based tools and evaluation platforms that reposition HIV prevention into a larger context of health and wellbeing with emphasis on the mental health and social isolation of gay men. At the end of this planning meeting, the team will be positioned to finalize and submit a unified, province-wide research proposal designed to reduce the persistent transmission of HIV among this key at risk population.