Not Business as Usual: Building a Racially and Culturally Appropriate, Evidence-Informed Transformative Approach to Addressing HIV in Black Canadian Communities.
The grand challenge addressed by the proposed initiative is to strengthen research capacity and output and HIV-related health policy advocacy. This initiative holds the promise of developing effective and sustainable evidence-based strategies to reduce or eliminate HIV disparities for Black communities in Canada. The goal is to create a Black community-led and informed research and policy that moves toward population-level health system solutions and away from descriptive studies of Black HIV disparities. The shift towards transformative Black HIV equity research and policy involves developing and implementing interventions focused on efforts to address avoidable and unjust inequities, historical and contemporary injustices, and the elimination of Black health and healthcare disparities, thereby paving the way for a more equitable future.
The foundational context of the proposed project is rooted in the previously established work of the Interim Committee on HIV among Black Canadian Communities (ICHBCC). Established in 2022, the ICHBCC’s purpose is to advocate for a transformative approach to HIV among Black Canadians that will change the trajectory of HIV among those communities, informed by the Manifesto on HIV that the group developed (Owino et al., 2024). This collective of Black researchers, service providers, and community advocates aims to build and strengthen the capacity to play a leading role in advocating for and designing the kind of robust, community-based, evidence-informed research, policy, and program strategies and directions that are required to change the trajectory of HIV among Black communities.