Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Access to health care services is critical to improving the health and well-being of people living with, or vulnerable to, HIV. Programs like the "Treament as Prevention" or TasP, implemented in British Columbia (BC) in 2010, have been shown to greatly reduce mortality, morbidity, and new cases of HIV per year. TasP also aims to accelerate access to care facilities and professionals at all stages of the HIV continuum of care. In order to optimize the delivery of care to those living with HIV in BC through TasP, there is a need to develop innovative programs to track, in near real time, new HIV cases spatially, as well as identify gaps in access and delivery of care to this population in different regions across BC. The overall goal of the proposed fellowship is to improve the health and well-being of people living with HIV/AIDS, and to reduce the rate of HIV/AIDS transmission through better access to care and improved monitoring of patient outcomes along the HIV continuum of care. Using Geographic Information Systems, the project will monitor the spatial distribution of new HIV cases in near real time, which will help provide faster targeted intervention. Simultaneously, spatial analysis methods will be developed that will, in turn, allow health professionals and policy makers to investigate and monitor access to health services along the HIV continuum of care and its impact on patient outcomes. The results of this study will be disseminated to local community partners, policy makers, researchers, and decision makers through the relationship the BC-CfE has built with its stakeholders over the years, as well as through publication of the study's results in academic journals and through conference presentations at the national and international levels. In addition, a web mapping of aggregated and summarized results will be made available to the public and the research community through the BC-CfE website.