Grant: Team Grant: HIV/AIDS and STBBI Community-Based Research Young women (~16-25 yrs)

Women represent an increasing proportion of HIV infections in Canada. This can be attributed to the fact that cis and trans women face systemic and social inequities, which impacts access to awareness, counselling, prevention and care measures. Inequities are amplified for those who are racialized, involved in sex work, use drugs, have migrated, are criminalized, and who identify as 2SLGBTQIA+. Young women are among all these groups and may have even less access to care. Low-barrier models of care play a significant role in addressing these barriers and have been used for other clinical care models by leveraging nurses. The LOI phase was guided by our Community Advisory Board (CAB) and Service Provider Advisory Board (SPAB), and this proposal summarizes a consultation process undertaken for the last six months that included focus groups to better understand the barriers and facilitators to women-led, women-centered, nurse-facilitated models of care that are community and regionally driven. Participants included women from the above identified communities, AIDS Service Organizations, nurses, and policy makers. In addition to understanding barriers and facilitators, we discussed collaboration, capacity building and training with each of the groups, and each session ended with priority-setting questions. This proposal highlights key findings for the LOI and maps out a 5-year plan for the next stage including additional consultation, co-design, pilot implementation and evaluation of this model of care. Central to this proposal are values of decolonial work, equity, diversity and inclusion; community capacity building, and community knowledge sharing. Our project is synergistic with others in this funding competition, and we have received letters of support from these groups which describe how we will collaborate, and leverage the learnings from our collective work.