Welcome! This initiative is dedicated to supporting the well-being of women living with HIV by creating enabling environments that affirm self-determination and safety. This work has been inspired and informed by, with, and for women living with HIV.
Through a peer-driven, evidence-informed national consultation, we have created 5 key recommendations to advance the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV. The recommendations were developed in partnership with representatives from the World Health Organization, based on the Consolidated guideline on sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV. We are challenging all health and social service organizations that support women living with HIV to commit to incorporating these key recommendations into their programming and policy. We invite AIDS Service Organizations, community-based organizations, medical clinics, and individuals across Canada to sign an endorsement of and commitment to these recommendations.
The 5 Key Recommendations:
We now have a national consensus on what the recommendations are, and we need to act on them to make change. There are important first steps that you can take, whether you are or care for a woman living with HIV, as a clinician, researcher, social service provider, community leader, activist, policy maker, funder, trainee, or anyone else practicing allyship. Click below to learn more.
01: Join the Commitment
Clinics, community and AIDS Service Organization (ASO) representatives, researchers, policy-makers, funders, and other groups who care for women living with HIV across Canada have endorsed these recommendations. Please sign the commitment statement below to endorse the 5 key recommendations and signal your commitment to implementing them into research, programming, and policy. If you have any questions, you can email the research coordinator at zoe_osborne@sfu.ca.
Together, we will create enabling environments across Canada that advance the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV in all their diversity.
The commitment
We are committed to the ongoing involvement of women living with HIV in the work we do and the services we provide. We commit to implementing the five key recommendations to advance the sexual and reproductive rights of women living with HIV.
02: Listen to Community Voices
This webpage explores 5 key recommendations for a national action plan to advance the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV. For each recommendation, you will find audio clips of women living with HIV and their allies describing what this recommendation means to them. We invite you to listen to their voices and hear their stories.
03: Learn how to Start
Here we have compiled important background information to help you begin this work. Read more about how these recommendations were developed and best practices for how you can begin to implement them into your practice and policy. Our authorship team, including women living with HIV, clinicians, researchers, and social service providers, are working to develop more accessible, peer-led resources.
The open-access paper
This paper (Kaida et al, Women’s Health 2022) provides the background and approach to identifying the five key recommendations to advance the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV. It includes specific information on best practices across the topics of trauma-iand violence aware care; supporting safer HIV disclosure; reproductive justice; and resilience, self-efficacy, and peer support.
The one-pager
This one-page poster summarizes the key recommendations and includes a brief background. Sign the one-pager indicating your commitment to advancing the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV and post it in your area visible to women accessing your space.
The implementation booklet
This document provides guidance on how to implement each of the 5 key recommendations to advance the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV. Included are examples of best practices of the recommendation in Canada, supplementary info to learn more about implementation, and references to global documents that have informed this work. Use this booklet to learn from best practices and implement the key recommendations in your own work.
The webinar series
The Canadian webinar series on the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV outlines Canadian research and best practices in sexual and reproductive health and rights and demonstrates the importance of community–academic partnerships and meaningful engagement of women living with HIV. The 5 key recommendations emerged as cross-cutting across the four priority topics of this series:
Topic-Specific Recommendations
The key recommendations cut-across four community-identified priority topics, outlined below. Included as supplementary material to the published paper, here we outline the topic-specific recommendations generated in the national consultation process.
The WHO Consolidated Guideline
The WHO Consolidated guideline on sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV was developed through a community-driven process and highlights the creation of enabling environments to advance the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV. The key recommendations are based on the guideline.
04: See community in action
Here are additional examples of others putting the key recommendations into practice. Learn from these examples to see how other groups have implemented policies, programs, knowledge translation projects, and research consistent with the key recommendations to advance the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV. We are happy to highlight your work - please email zoe_osborne@sfu.ca if you have products or initiatives that you'd like to share here.
By the CHIWOS-PAW study team
Poster Series: CHIWOS-PAW Indigenous Wise Women describe how healthcare providers can support the Health and Wellbeing of Indigenous Women living with HIV
These posters are created in alignment with all 5 key recommendations: They were developed with meaningful engagement of women living with HIV, centring the priorities of Indigenous women living with HIV. Research informed and community-driven, they share important knowledge about the health of women living with HIV, with attention to strengths-based and inclusive language.
05: Advocate for Change
We have created resources to help you advocate to others to undertake this collective work to support the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV. Use and adapt this slide deck and briefing note to communicate to your colleagues the 5 key recommendations, their development, and the importance of collective action and implementation in creating supportive environments. These resources may be useful for advocating to others within your own organization, invited presentations, and other speaking opportunities.
Slide deck
Use this short presentation and speaking notes to speak to the importance of the recommendations – either to advocate to those at your own organization or others!
Briefing note
Use this briefing note to advocate to others at your organization – it explains the importance of the recommendations and suggestions for what kinds of action you can advocate for from your colleagues.