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

This project was conceived by CATIE, the Canadian AIDS Society, the Interagency Coalition on AIDS and Development, and the Canadian Public Health Association. Recognizing the steadily growing and evolving biomedical knowledge of HIV, the Resonance Project has the objectives to critically examine: - if/how gay men are taking up biomedical knowledge of HIV - if/how biomedical knowledge of HIV has resonance for their everyday lives - the discourses men use to make sense of risk, and inform their sexual decision-making and practices, and - the roles and responsibilities of institutions and service providers in shaping these discourses. The research questions are: 1. In what ways do gay and bisexual men living in Canada - individually and as communities - make sense of, incorporate into their understanding, and modify their behaviours based on, biomedical knowledge of HIV? 2. How are community-based organizations and service providers succeeding and struggling in integrating new biomedical knowledge of HIV within their existing (and evolving) social, structural and behavioural prevention efforts? 3. What key elements - main messages, precautions and caveats - must be incorporated into communication about biomedical knowledge of HIV to be sensitive to the lived realities of gay and bisexual men and their communities? This research project will be conducted through 5 phases, moving through an iterative process from understanding to knowledge translation and exchange. The outcomes of this research project will help HIV prevention stakeholders to identify how they should be integrating recent and emerging biomedical knowledge of HIV into current prevention programs and policies in Canada in ways that are best supported by, and supportive of, people at risk of HIV.