Research important for more programing, funds

For many working in community based organizations, it is about time.

A lot of money from the provincial HIV Strategy is being used to catch up on statistics, said Nicole White, executive co-ordinator of AIDS Saskatoon.

“There is clean-up dollars that should have been happening a decade ago, that they’re now like, ‘okay, we have a few dollars, we’ll finally do it,’” she said.

Without a structure in place for information, so organizations have not received all the information they need, White said.

“There could be new trends and there could be new populations that we should be aware of, and we should be working with, but the reporting structure is just not caught up to date and certainly doesn’t meet our needs,” she said.

Research plays a big role in knowing what’s going on, how to ensure programs are being effective and that education materials are being presented in the right way and to the right people.

“I think Ottawa, Saskatoon and Regina are good examples where there is not enough data, so it’s hard to pin people down as much. So if we don’t know really what’s going on, it’s harder to hold people accountable,” said Mark Tyndall, head of infectious disease at University of Ottawa and Ottawa Hospital.

In Vancouver, the reason Insite, Canada’s first — and controversial — supervised injection site continues to operated is that there is rigorous, evaluative research ongoing, he said.

It’s the numbers that get people’s attention and bring in support, said Dr. David Tu, a physician with the STOP HIV/AIDS pilot project, designed to increase the quality of HIV services in Vancouver.

“Another reason we have been pushed to do research is we need to justify why we think we should have increased funding or why we should even keep our funding,” he said.

Like many organizations, including Northern Intertribal Health Agency in Saskatchewan, programs in Vancouver have year-to-year funding.

Before STOP, there was no dedicated funding and they would have to scrounge for resources, Tu said. Since the project’s inception it’s been easier because there are the numbers to back up funding requests.

Good research can help make the struggle for funding easier, he said.

“You need the numbers, you need a bottom-line dollars argument and you need a champion, who knows how to move things politically. We were lucky to have these things in Vancouver. I don’t know who is going to be the champion in Saskatchewan, but I think the cost effectiveness argument exists and it’s just a matter of actually pushing that onto the political agenda.”

The ball is getting rolling on research in Saskatchewan. A multi-disciplinary Saskatoon Research Group has come together to try to improve care, not only for the HIV-positive person, but ideally for the community, said Dr. Stuart Skinner, an assistant professor in the division of infectious disease at the University of Saskatchewan.

“What we want to do is increase testing, increase engagement in care, increase linkages into care, improve outcomes and most importantly improve all the overall quality of health in our patients,” he said.

Skinner said he thinks one of the projects will be about perceptions of HIV among both positive and negative people.

“If you know what some of the perceptions are then you can target education to address some of those gaps.”

Several community organizations also are in the early stages of research, including All Nations Hope AIDS Network in Regina, which has teamed up with the Public Health Agency of Canada and Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region to start a survey of aboriginal people.

ahill@panow.com

This story is the seventh in a series about the face of HIV in Saskatchewan. Research for this project was made possible by a journalism grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

by Angela Hill

Research important for more programing, funds

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