Update: National HIV and Housing Collaborative

National HIV and Housing Collaborative

  March 2013

Quick Links

CHRA’s 45th National Congress on Housing and Homelessness 

Canadian Association for HIV Research Conference  

The National HIV and Housing Collaborative Blueprint

We would like to take this opportunity to ask you some important questions about upcoming meetings and presentations, and the projects you are currently working on.

To fill us in, please complete our survey before Friday, March 22nd.

North American Housing &  

HIV/AIDS Research Summit VII

Closing the Housing Gap in the HIV Treatment Cascade

Montréal, Québec, September 25-27, 2013
www.hivhousingsummit.org

The seventh Housing and HIV/AIDS Research Summit is convened by the National AIDS Housing Coalition (NAHC), the Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN), and la Coalition des organismes communautaires québécois de lutte contre le sida (COCQ-SIDA).

There will be opportunities for members of the National HIV and Housing Collaborative to present their research at Summit VII. Please complete the above survey to help us plan for this! 

Ottawa, Ontario, April 30 – May 3, 2013
Keith Hambly, Floyd Visser, and Sean Rourke will be presenting a concurrent workshop on May 1 entitled Is Housing the Best Medicine? The role of housing in the management of chronic disease.

Click here to view a full description of the workshop or to register for this event.

Launch Date: April 5, 2013

As part of our commitment to building a coordinated knowledge mobilization strategy, we are building on the existing infrastructure of HealthyHousing.ca to create a single website where we can share our work, and related research and policy documents.

A key feature on the site will be a housing policy toolkit. Following the launch of the toolkit, we will be seeking your input on the development of other useful tools.

To share your update with us, please complete our survey!

The purpose of this study is to determine whether supportive housing interventions provided for people with HIV: reduce acute health care utilization, and their related costs; and improve the continuum of health care and health outcomes for people with HIV who were unstably housed in Ontario. The research will involve six housing sites across 5 communities in Ontario. These include: Fife House  (Toronto); Abercrombie Place, AIDS Committee of Guelph (Guelph); Bruce House (Ottawa); AIDS Niagara (St. Catherines); LOFT / McEwan House (Toronto); and John Gordon Home/London Regional AIDS Hospice (London).

The study has now received ethics approval and data collection will begin this spring. Findings will be presented at the North American Housing and HIV/AIDS Research Summit in September!

To share your news with us, please complete our survey!

Positive Living, Positive Homes

NPA: J. Evin Jones, Pacific AIDS Network
$375,000 – Operating Grant

Positive Living, Positive Homes (PLPH) will be the first study in BC to focus specifically on housing and HIV. This project will use a qualitative case study approach to examine how local and provincial policies and programs interact with and impact PHAs’ abilities to manage their health and wellbeing and to highlight policies and programs that can be used as models across jurisdictions in BC. PLPH will document the successes and challenges of various housing-related programs, services and policies from three case study communities – Vancouver, Kamloops and Prince George – each of which face significantly different housing needs and pressures, and have distinct housing and HIV service structures.

Positive Spaces, Healthy Places

NPA: Sean Rourke, Ontario HIV Treatment Network

$25,000 – Dissemination Events

This study is now complete and the team has received funding to bring people together people report findings back to the communities and individuals who participated in the study; encourage the Ontario ASOs that were not directly involved in the study to use the findings to increase access to supportive housing in their regions; engage and educate Ontario’s Local Health Integration Network housing providers and policy makers; and highlight the impacts and contribution of this seminal project to the burgeoning field of community-based housing research. The team has planned five key dissemination events.

« Chez nous, c’est chez toi ». Logement et VIH au Québec : théâtre-forum et outil multimédia de sensibilisation

Housing and HIV in Québec: Popular Theatre and a Multimedia Tool to Raise Awareness

NPA: Hélène Lapperière

, University of Ottawa

$25,000 – Dissemination Events

The aim of this project is to disseminate the preliminary findings of Chez nous, c’est chez toi : une étude exploratoire sur le logement et le VIH au Québec. To raise awareness of the issues related to HIV and Housing in Québec, the team plans to use popular theatre to develop two short films, and to produce a multimedia tool that will appeal to various audiences (policy makers, social workers, journalists, and health professionals). These activities will be shared at meetings related to housing and HIV, including the North American Housing and HIV/AIDS Research Summit.