November 17, 2025 marks the start of the World Hepatitis Alliance’s World Hepatitis Testing Week. This week also happens to be International Testing Week in Canada coordinated by CoCQ-SIDA in Quebec. Both organizations offer promotional tools and invite you to take part by organizing activities related to testing.
In British Columbia, the growing burden of hepatitis and other sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STBBI) exist as part of a larger cluster of obstacles to well-being. Interconnected health and social challenges include stigma and discrimination, co-infections, mental illness, poverty, the ongoing drug poisoning crisis, unstable housing, and an overburdened health care system along an ever-shifting political landscape. Across the province, peers and community-based organizations (CBOs) work hard to provide local, tailored services to members in their communities, often incorporating testing into their pre-existing, trusted programs. Additionally in BC, there are a variety of testing options that make testing possible outside of clinical settings.
In effort to better understand the roles that peers [a person with lived and/or living experience who brings this experience to their community engagement, activism, and/or work ] and other community-based service providers play in STBBI testing processes, and to further understand how this work can be sustained, PAN is facilitating the Testing Guidance Project. This project is in partnership with Dr. Mark Gilbert, BCCDC and UBC, and funded by UBC’s Community-University Engagement Support (CUES). It is our goal to bring together community and public health perspectives and support improved, community-based systems of STBBI testing in BC.
Part of this project includes hearing from YOU through community consultations; happening this fall (end of October to the beginning of December 2025).
You can find the original news link, including ways to participate here.
If you are interested in participating or learning more about the project, please contact Simon Goff ([email protected]) and Emily Taylor-Lariviere ([email protected]).