Supporting PHA service providers at the individual, organizational, and systemic levels

The advance of effective anti-retroviral treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS (PHAs) has enabled significant improvement in health status and outcomes, and PHAs are now increasingly engaged in the workforce. In these roles, PHAs undergo a shift along the continuum of service recipient to service provider. This shift can have psychosocial consequences and identity implications that are often overlooked or misunderstood. We propose to bring together key stakeholders from across Canada to share knowledge and regional priorities in addressing the needs of PHA service providers and to form a national knowledge exchange network. Our objectives are to: 1) Synthesize knowledge on regional research and practice issues and share the experiences of PHAs to build capacity on the issues affecting self-care and access to support for PHAs in service provider roles; 2) Identify the gaps in knowledge and establish priorities for regional and national research agendas, programming, and policy development to support PHA service providers; 3) Develop a national knowledge exchange network to engage a broad range of stakeholders to share learning about current regional research and projects aiming to address support for PHAs in service provider roles; and 4) Bring researchers, community members, and service providers together at a face-to-face Think Tank to develop a national collaborative intervention research initiative and to establish a plan to disseminate the findings. This planning grant would support a review of the current literature and a program scan; development of a national knowledge exchange network; a two day face-to-face research Think Tank to consolidate current knowledge and to develop a collaborative intervention research initiative; and dissemination of a final project report and submission of a process paper and research synthesis paper for publication in peer reviewed journals.