Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

HIV is now a chronic health condition because people are living longer than ever before, largely attributed to the ongoing advances in antiretroviral therapy. People living with HIV (PLWH) are increasingly spread across geographies and are not confined to urban centres or cores. The majority of health sciences and services literature examines HIV within urban or rural contexts; the suburban gradient is not sufficiently described, despite how an overwhelming proportion of Canadians live in this form of community. This research investigated how PLWH in a suburban, Ontario, Canada community access health and social care services. PLWH were recruited through the regional AIDS service organization and through snowball sampling. Using hermeneutic phenomenology associated with Martin Heidegger, in-depth interviews with PLWH were performed to understand their experience of accessing care. An overwhelming proportion of the PLWH interviewed identified how living in a suburban community is isolating and erects barriers to accessing care and creating a cohesive community. Many PLWH expressed experiences of being stigmatized by a variety of health care practitioners (e.g. physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, paramedics, etc.) in the course of seeking care. It was also established that many older PLWH have numerous, complex health conditions that require collaborative care from a variety of health care practitioners. The findings from this research have implications for developing community-based, interprofessional and collaborative health and social care networks; the delivery of health and social care services; health care professional training and sensitivity to the diverse needs of PLWH; and aging with HIV.