HIV screening kits and sexual health surveys to pop up around Canada

With Pride events occurring in-person once again across Canada, the Community-Based Research Centre is visiting festivals from coast to coast to conduct surveys around sexual health and provide HIV rapid self-test kits for free. Mark Neufeld reports.

By Mark Neufeld

HIV screening kits and sexual health surveys could be coming to a Pride festival near you. The Community-Based Research Centre is collecting data from pride events across Canada and offering Free HIV self-testing kits to anyone 18 years or older, who wants one.

The Pride Festival in Winnipeg was the first stop for CBRC on their cross Canada tour, research director Nathan Lachowsky says he expects to visit around 24 pride festivals including Vancouver, Toronto, and Calgary. Lachowsky says in Winnipeg around 300 people participated in the study during Pride weekend.

“Clearly the community was interested and excited and it was great that people came out, and really took some time out of their pride celebrations to participate in research and give back to the community, so we are really grateful to everyone who participated,” explained Lachowsky.

The Sex Now survey is Canada’s longest-running health survey of gay, bisexual, queer, trans, Two-Spirt and non-binary people. The data helps to shape public health care policies.


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Lachowksy says this year partnerships with REACH Nexus and the Canadian Institutes for health research, they’re able to offer the rapid HIV self-test kits at pride festivals for free. These HIV tests are capable of informing a person of their HIV status with more than 99 per cent accuracy in just 60 seconds.

“For a long time, HIV testing in Canada required going to a provider, which meant going to a sexual health clinic or going to your doctor. I mean unfortunately in Canada HIV stigma is alive and well. There is still a lot of fear, anxiety, concern, and misinformation about HIV that’s out there.”

Lachowsky says the new HIV rapid self-test is the only test of their kind approved by Health Canada and expects to get the HIV test kits to thousands of people over the summer.

“That’s really the opportunity here, is to engage with people, to give them access to testing at hopefully the lowest barrier sense possible and that information is really useful not just for that individual but as researchers for our study it helps us understand who is facing what barriers to health care. Who would benefit from these, and how can we design programmes to put the test into the hands of those who would benefit most,” explained Lachowsky.

The rapid HIV self-test kits utilize a small drop of blood from a fingerstick to provide results.

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