Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

Within communities most impacted by the epidemic in Canada (gay men, Indigenous peoples, people of colour, etc.), HIV/AIDS is both a historical experience of loss and community resilience, and an ongoing public health concern. Oral history offers a way of addressing persistent health challenges, not just by preserving the past, but by providing insight into how current prevention and treatment interventions can be reinvigorated. This proposal aims to build on an ongoing CIHR Catalyst Grant-funded project collecting oral history of the early years of British Columbia's HIV/AIDS epidemic, with the end goal of sharing our findings with diverse community audiences. Thus far, we have conducted over 110 interviews with a diverse group of long-term survivors and caregivers across British Columbia. This knowledge translation and exchange with affected communities will help to preserve cultural memory of the early AIDS epidemic, promote much-needed cross-generational and cross-sector dialogue in the present, and contribute a more nuanced temporal lens to future health research, promotion, and care. If secured, funding would be used to produce community-oriented dissemination events, programming, and tools to maximize the impacts of our oral histories on key stakeholders in the community and health sector. Specifically, we will: 1) Hold two community forums in Vancouver and Victoria to share the main results of our research with affected communities. 2) Generate intergenerational community dialogue by integrating our findings within existing programming run by our community-based partners at YouthCO and the Community-Based Research Centre. 3) Adapt our archival collection into a multi-media exhibit (including interview clips and quotations, and archival materials) and present it in Vancouver, Victoria, and elsewhere. And 4) Produce at least one community-oriented, arts-based output from the project, likely a short film, to share our findings with a wider audience.