Grant: Operating Grant - HIV/AIDS CBR Program - General

In Canada, the criminal law is applied aggressively to HIV resulting in considerable debate regarding the current requirement to disclose before sex posing a "realistic possibility of transmission." These debates focus on the formal legal consequences for people living with HIV with respect to their sexual behaviours, usually disregarding how health and social care practices and policies mirror HIV criminalization. Using a qualitative, arts-based approach (Body Mapping) that is grounded in a community-based research (CBR) framework, the proposed study will explore how the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure and the assumptions underlying it creep into the lives of women living with HIV vis-à-vis their interactions with health and social care providers as well as other significant relationships that women living with HIV identify as being affected by the HIV criminalization discourse. The proposed study will contribute to discussions about the proper role for the criminal justice system in the HIV response in Canada, situating the discussion within the context of gender, race and HIV-related stigma. It will provide evidence of the impacts of criminalization on women living with HIV and the HIV response in Canada that can be used in law reform or litigation activities aimed at changing the overly broad criminalization of HIV non-disclosure in Canada. Additionally, this study will contribute to developing processes to support women living with HIV in deciding whether, when and how to disclose, and to access the services they need by understanding and dismantling criminalization creep into health and social services. This research will provide both an increased understanding of how to reconcile the legal, social, cultural aspects of criminalization in order to develop supportive legal, health and social care environments for women living with HIV and tools to challenge the problematic aspects of HIV criminalization.