Community Preparedness in the Context of HIV Point-of-Care-Testing in the Atlantic Region: Are Our Communities Ready?

One quarter of Canadians living with HIV don't know they have it, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada (2012). Access to HIV testing is an important issue that can help individuals know their HIV status so they can benefit from early treatment and care. However, access to HIV testing is challenging, particularly in Atlantic Canada. HIV point-of-care-testing (POCT) can offer immediate test results, but this type of testing isn't available in Atlantic Canada. To date, there has been only one HIV POCT pilot study in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Findings from this study suggest that many individuals would like access to immediate test results through HIV POCT. From a community-based research perspective, we would like to know if communities are prepared for new HIV testing approaches like HIV POCT. To find this out, we will invite 30 people, including those living with HIV or affected by HIV, to come to a community consultation in Halifax to talk about their ideas for ways of knowing if a community is ready for HIV POCT. The findings of the POCT scoping review we are currently working on will be used to help us develop the questions we will ask at our community consultation meeting. After this meeting, we will invite others to join us by phone to talk about their ideas and experiences in determining community preparedness for HIV POCT. We will use the information shared with us to develop a draft model that will help us know if a community is ready for HIV testing approaches like POCT. We will also use this information to write a larger grant to test our draft HIV POCT preparedness model in other non-urban communities in Canada. We hope that through this work we can look at creative, community-based ways of improving access to and uptake of new types of HIV testing, especially in smaller cities and communities across Canada.