Grant: Health System Impact Fellowships - PostDoc Western Canada 2 year

Effective biomedical HIV prevention technologies such as Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis and Treatment as Prevention, combined with regular and accessible HIV testing and linkage to care, have the potential to vastly improve the health of people living with HIV and eliminate HIV transmission to HIV-negative individuals. With a cost savings of approximately $300,000 per averted HIV infection, these tools represent an opportunity for significant cost savings to the Canadian health care system. However, access to biomedical HIV testing, treatment, and prevention services remains patchwork across Canada, and HIV incidence among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (gbMSM) remains elevated, with gbMSM being 71 times more likely to acquire HIV than other men. This suggests that further work is needed to ensure health systems are sufficiently equipped to meet the needs of this diverse community. As such, this fellowship leverages the newly-formed Community Alliance project - a collaboration between Canada's leading gay and bisexual men's health organizations - to improve health systems access for gbMSM by (1) by developing a robust evidence base for health systems change through the identification and synthesis of regional and national data sources; (2) developing a monitoring-and-evaluation framework for measuring progress towards programmatic goals; and (3) building research and analytic capacity among community-based partners and researchers to promote ongoing data synthesis, analysis and reporting. Primary data for this project will be drawn from Sex Now - a serial cross-sectional survey of over 8,000 gbMSM across Canada administered by the Community Based Centre for Gay Men's Health (CBRC). Findings will be disseminated through the Community Alliance, which will leverage them to develop strategic partnerships for the betterment of health systems serving gbMSM, resulting in improved quality of life and health outcomes for people living with and affected by HIV.