FHS professor Angela Kaida named CRC in HIV and Sexual & Reproductive Health Equity
In late October, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) announced that FHS professor Angela Kaida would become the new Tier 1 Canada Research Chair (CRC) in HIV and sexual & reproductive health equity.
Kaida, a renowned global health and HIV researcher, is the current Scientific Director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research鈥檚 Institute of Gender and Health. The new research program that she is undertaking as the Tier 1 CRC will continue to deeply explore issues that lie at the intersection of global health, HIV, and gender and health.
鈥淒espite the significant advances in HIV prevention and treatment that has seen the once deadly disease evolve into a manageable chronic condition for those with access to antiretroviral therapy (ART),鈥� says Kaida, 鈥渢here have not been significant shifts in the social and structural determinants of health that influence and shape the risk and consequences of HIV.鈥� The lack of progress in changing the contexts that shape HIV risk and consequence strongly suggests that a health equity lens and approach is needed at the population level.
Kaida and her research team will examine how stressors influenced by social and structural determinants of health contribute to the development and sustained presence of health inequities in youth and in women living with HIV in Canada. She will be undertaking three studies to better understand the interaction and intersection of health inequity and socio-structural determinants:
Socio-structural determinants of health on immune activation and inflammation among adolescents and youth at high HIV risk
This study will yield critical new data regarding the sex and gender differentiated experiences, socio-structural conditions, and pathways that develop and/or accelerate during young adulthood to affect inflammation among youth and shape risk for HIV and other chronic and infectious diseases.
Socio-structural determinants of health on hormone dysregulation and other markers of sexual and reproductive health to affect healthy aging among women living with HIV in Canada
These analyses will yield critical new data regarding the differentiated experiences, socio-structural conditions, and pathways that lead to poor sexual and reproductive health outcomes and accelerated aging, and will help address healthy aging.
Knowledge Mobilization for Health Equity
Through an extensive national consultation across stakeholder groups and centering the voices and priorities of women living with HIV, we will enact global, evidence-based leadership to create the enabling social and structural environments needed to improve the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV in Canada.
Kaida鈥檚 commitment to looking for a resolution to HIV persistence by addressing social and structural health inequities of populations is one of the innovative approaches supported by the Canada Research Chair program, which aims to advance research that leads to groundbreaking discoveries and innovations across health, engineering, sciences, social sciences and humanities.
Ted Hewitt, president of SSHRC notes that 鈥淸b]y supporting researchers and institutions across Canada, we鈥檙e not only strengthening our research ecosystem, but also empowering the next generation of researchers to tackle the complex challenges of today and tomorrow.鈥�