What is the CIHR CBR Collaborative?
The CIHR CBR Collaborative (a program of REACH) is a vibrant and sustainable national network fostering rigorous, relevant community-based research that will improve the health and well-being of people affected by HIV/AIDS across Canada. In order to strengthen regional partnerships and community voice, the CBR Collaborative conducts regional consultations to identify research and CBR capacity-building priorities across the country. In British Columbia this process is led by the BC Core Team – a small, multi-disciplinary group.
The CBR Coordinators, who are supported by the CIHR CBR Collaborative and the CIHR Centre for REACH in HIV/AIDS, presented a poster at the CAHR 2014 Conference in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The poster lays out research priority setting processes that happened across the country (including in British Columbia) and provides some examples of research and capacity-building priorities that have been implemented:
Channeling CBR Potential: Setting HIV/AIDS Community-Based Research Priorities in Communities Across Canada
Authors: Janice Duddy, Sonia Gaudry, Kellee Hodge, Aurélie Hot, Andrea Langlois, Sarah Peddle
CIHR CBR Collaborative Centre: BC Region Research Priorities
The CBR research priorities finalized by the BC Core Team are intended to focus and guide the development of new community based research initiatives in British Columbia. The HIV epidemic is heavily influenced by health inequity. Ensuring positive early years experiences, enabling autonomy and personal coping and establishing a healthy standard of living and stable finances across the social gradient will foster resilience within society to communicable diseases like HIV. In BC, the CBR Collaborative Centre recognizes that the following groups experience health inequity and are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS:
- Gay men and other men who have sex with men
- Aboriginal people
- People who use illicit drugs
- Women who experience marginalization
- People who live in rural and remote communities of BC
BC Community-based Research Priorities: The BC research priorities have been developed by the BC Core Team, a process which included a participatory priority setting process at the 2012 Knowledge to Action CBR conference. The priorities were reviewed and updated by the Core Team (Spring 2014) and will continue to inform the work of the CBR Collaborative in BC and of PAN’s Community Based Research Program:
- HIV/AIDS related stigma and individual/community resilience
- Integration of STBBIs into HIV/AIDS services, including examining the intersections between HIV, HCV and other related communicable diseases and health conditionsthrough the life course
- Improve reach and engagement to services across the prevention and care cascade as laid out in the Ministry of Health’s From Hope to Health: Towards an AIDS-free Generation provincial strategic directions document
- Modifiable social and structural determinants of health that impact people living with and at risk for HIV and their ability to engage fully in their health and wellness (e.g., housing, food security, poverty, violence, colonization, heteronormativity, and legal issues such as the impacts of criminalization).
Questions? Feedback? Get in touch!Andrea Langlois
Community-Based Research Manager [email protected]