Current Projects

Given the erasure of Black queer and trans people within mainstream queer communities, and the homophobia present in some Black communities, this project is geared at cultivating social spaces for Black queer and trans folks around issues pertinent to their realities such as substance use, ballroom culture, and sexual exploitation. These gatherings will be evaluated for their effectivity in reaching and stimulating important discussions amongst diverse Black queer and trans communities.

In this phase, information will be gathered through a literature review to identify gaps and pertinent theoretical approaches to the study of HIV issues among GBTMSM in smaller urban centres. Consultation with GBTMSM prevention workers, executive directors in ASOs will then be used identify outreach strategies, issues unique to each city region, and challenges to implementing research knowledge in ASO programming. Investigators on multi-city projects related to GBTMSM and HIV will also be consulted to identify challenges and facilitating factors associated with multi-site projects. These collective activities, will be used to develop, pilot test, refine a quantitative survey that addresses priority areas across sites as well as site-specific questions, and an appropriate sampling methodology will be developed for the proposed study.

This protocol will offer guidelines for ethical research with Black-embodied people in Canada, and will have implications for research policy and practice across the health, clinical, and biomedical sectors. In this project, we aim to 1) cultivate a community-based, interdisciplinary, and multi-sectoral partnership to facilitate the crafting of a research, data collection, and evaluation protocol for Black communities in Canada. 2) Assist ACB communities, and allied researchers in thinking through the nuances of conducting ethical and beneficial research with and for Black communities. 3) Evaluate the utility of a community-created research protocol for ethical research, data collection, and evaluation processes with ACB communities. Phase 2 of this project will consist of partnership with Indigenous researchers in organizing a learning institute around research ethics in Black and Indigenous communities.

This qualitative study is to document the lived experience of violence. Interviews with trans people and community service providers will provide rich and in-depth information about violence against trans people in the Region of Waterloo. Our research objectives are: 1) to document the types of discrimination experienced by trans people in the Region of Waterloo; 2) understand the contextual nuances of discrimination and how it manifests in community, family and peer settings; 3) discover ways that trans people mitigate such experiences through forms of personal and community resiliency, and 4) identify program and policy solutions to ameliorate trans discrimination and its effects.

Phase 1 of this project employed qualitative and arts-based methods to gain an understanding of the histories, realities, erasure, and lived experiences of mixed Indigenous and Black communities in Canada pertaining to colonization, lateral violence, health and social service access. This phase will be used to create a written, visual and narrative archive of the histories, geographies of both African diasporic and Indigenous ancestry in Canada. Phase 2 of this project will focus on knowledge mobilization to share the research findings about the social determinants of health, mental health and service access needs of Indigenous-Black communities.

This project encompasses the adaptation of the HIPTeens Intervention from the American context to the Ontario context. This intervention engages Black youth in a group-based intervention involving social cognitive theory, role-playing, and popular education-based theatre to facilitate conversations about their service needs, understanding of sexual health, relationships, STIs, disclosure and HIV criminalization, anti-black racism, self-esteem, among other topics. As the first intervention adaptation in Canada that focuses on the health of Black youth, this project has huge implications as it A) it aims to promote sexual health and HIV prevention within priority populations; B) entails the adaptation of an evidence-based intervention that will drive innovative research that addresses the socio-structural and clinical care needs of ACB communities, and support the training of a community of researchers and local youth programmers; and C) ensures the quality, consistency and effectiveness of HIV programs and services by funding the development, uptake, evaluation and integration of evidence-informed initiatives, programs and practices

A multidisciplinary team of social scientists from Wilfrid Laurier University in partnership with the Rainbow Community Council (RCC) address community needs related to the wellbeing the local LGBTQ community. The proposed qualitative study aims to co-develop an in-depth social-ecological understanding of experiences of LGBTQ immigrants and refugees in the Region of Waterloo.

This two-day symposium aims to gather decision makers in the Region of Waterloo, Ontario, to share data and discuss findings from the OutLook Study of local LGBTQ persons to develop action plans for programming and policy change. Stakeholders will exchange data across five key health and wellness themes from the OutLook Study: 1) understanding the types of violence and discrimination experienced by LGBTQ individuals in the Region and their effects on health outcomes; 2) understanding and responding to the unique healthcare concerns of trans peoples; 3) understanding the types of healthcare access barriers facing LGBTQ individuals; 4) understanding early childhood experience of LGBTQ persons and its effects on health outcomes later in life; and 5) understanding the unique health needs of Indigenous and racialized LGBTQ communities.

Follow-up on the original project, focusing on additional analyses, team-building capacity-building initiatives, and knowledge translation and exchange efforts.

Findings from phase 1, a needs assessment with ACB members across Waterloo Region, demonstrated that ACB community members in Waterloo Region are less likely to have a primary care provider due to structural barriers, less likely to seek HIV and sexual health related services due to stigma, and are more likely to be dealing with undiagnosed mental health-related issues. Individuals from the ACB Network of Waterloo Region have indicated a desire for further empirical data on community needs and health disparities to inform both the Cambridge-North Dumfries and Kitchener-Waterloo Ontario Health Team application and implementation processes currently taking place in the Region, as well as the Mayor’s Task Force on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the city of Kitchener.

Phase 2 of this study, involves the formulation of a large needs-assessment survey. This project will entail pilot testing, refinement of the survey, as well as calculate sampling frame and determine an appropriate recruitment strategy. Data from this broader, more comprehensive quantitative needs assessment will inform the upstream prevention cascade focus of ACCKWA’s double helix prevention and care continuum.

In partnership with the Coalition of Muslim Women, this qualitative study consists is aimed at understanding the ways in which Muslim women’s experiences of employment precarity in Waterloo Region are shaped by gendered Islamophobia, and the implications of this on the mental health and wellbeing of these women.

The Community-Based Research Media Lab is available to students, faculty, staff and community partners alike and has media equipment for arts- and digital media- informed collaborative research both in the field and on-site. This space also functions as multi-use space where arts-informed research outputs produced from the ongoing work can be exhibited and shared.