2026 Capacity and Community Building Gathering

PAN was pleased to be hosting our annual Community and Capacity Building Gathering that brought together people working in HIV, viral hepatitis, STBBI health promotion and harm reduction. The event was held on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Tsawwassen, and Kwantlen First Nations in what is often referred to as Richmond, on October 13-14, 2026.

Before we go further, we wanted to extend our gratitude to everyone who shared their knowledge and expertise in a session. Each presentation was so valuable! We want to acknowledge how vulnerable sharing a part of yourself can be as well as how powerful every unique voice and spirit is.

Lastly, thank you to all attendees – your presence was felt and meaningful.

We are happy to share some resources from the event, please check them out below.

1. Positive Leadership Development Institute (PLDI)

PLDI has lots of upcoming trainings, if you’re interested in applying you can check out their apply page here or if you have any questions please contact Marc Seguin, Manager of PLDI: [email protected] (or leave a msg at 604.569.1998)

2. PAN Evaluation Services

Are you applying for funding and need an evaluator? Want to learn how your program is working? Need help collecting/analyzing/presenting your data? We can help! PAN offers a variety of evaluation services:

We specialize in evaluation planning and framework development, focus group, interview, and meeting facilitation, data analysis, and knowledge sharing.
We can take care of the collecting, analyzing and interpreting of data to examine the efficiency and effectiveness of programs so that organizations can focus on continuous improvement.
Our team has experience conducting large multi-year evaluations including Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and Health Canada funded projects.

Learn more here and please contact Leanne Zubowski ([email protected]) if you have any questions!

3. Thrive Community of Practice

Led by PAN and a team of peer leaders, researchers, service providers, and public health partners, the Thrive project focuses on improving STBBI outcomes for people who use drugs, including those who have experienced criminalization and/or incarceration in small urban, rural, and remote (SURR) communities around BC. You can learn more about the Thrive project here.

One of the project’s activities is hosting a Community of Practice for anyone interested in STBBIs and health equity for people who use drugs and/or who have experienced incarceration in SURR communities. If this is you, they’d love you to join the quarterly Community of Practice meeting.

If you are interested in joining future meetings, please REGISTER HERE.

For more information please reach out to [email protected]

4. Undetectable = Untransmittable CATIE presentation

Neha Gutkar from CATIE offered a great overview of U=U at the event that was followed by a fantastic panel discussion. We are very appreciative to Neha and CATIE from attending, sharing, and rolling with the technical mishaps! To access the full slide deck PDF, please click on the slide image below.

As many of you know we could not see all of the slides – including the evaluation slide. Please consider completing an evaluation of this session for CATIE here.

5. STBBI Epidemiology Update

We are always so grateful to Dr. Sofia Barlett for her show up factor, transparency in data and surveillance, and deep commitment to community. Thanks Sofia! (click on slide image for full PDF)

6. STOP HIV/AIDS Program Evaluation (SHAPE) 2.0 Study: Progress, Lessons Learned, and Next Steps

Thank you to Tim and Giulia from the BC Centre for Excellence (BC-CfE) for their last minute support of our provincial event and for providing a great presentation on SHAPE 2.0. (click on slide image for full PDF)

7. Trivia

By popular demand – we are very happy to provide you all with the trivia content from Wednesday morning. As well, if you’re looking for more trivia – back in July we shared trivia content used for our Pride webinar (find it here).

8. Community Connections

And, using PAN’s and allies’ current research, policy, and knowledge-mobilization work as conversation starters—not reading assignments—this session looked to connect attendees within Health Authority regions, identify local realities and gaps, and surface concrete opportunities for collaboration. Check out the overview document by clicking on the image, or find links to each included project below: