Government of Canada supports community-based projects addressing HIV, Hepatitis C, and other sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections

The Government of Canada is committed to working with partners and stakeholders across the country in support of the global goal of ending viral hepatitis, HIV and other sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STBBI) as public health threats by 2030. The contribution of community-based organizations is central to Canada’s ability to achieve these targets.

May 24, 2023

The Government of Canada is committed to working with partners and stakeholders across the country in support of the global goal of ending viral hepatitis, HIV and other sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STBBI) as public health threats by 2030. The contribution of community-based organizations is central to Canada's ability to achieve these targets.

Projects funded by the HIV and Hepatitis C Community Action Fund (CAF) and Harm Reduction Fund (HRF) take an integrated approach to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of prevention initiatives for these infections, along with other sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections.

HIV and Hepatitis C Community Action Fund

Through the CAF, a total of 26 projects in Ontario are receiving $23,955,966 in funding.

Project: Strengthening Peer Engagement for Northern Ontario
Funding: $2,652,554
Locations: Barrie, North Bay, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Toronto
Recipients: The Gilbert Centre for Social and Support Services ($516,898); AIDS Committee of North Bay and Area/Comité du Sida de North Bay et de la Région ($516,898); Réseau Access Network ($584,962); AIDS Committee of Thunder Bay (Elevate NWO) ($516,898); and Ontario Aboriginal HIV/AIDS Strategy ($516,898)
Project Details: This project aims to build the capacity of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people, people who use drugs, and people living with HIV/hepatitis C as peer community workers through educational workshops/sessions to provide peer-to-peer front-line delivery, outreach, and interventions. The project will foster accessible, sustainable, stigma-free prevention, treatment, and support across northern Ontario beyond the urban centres and health districts.

Project: Inside Out - Reducing STBBI Risk among Prisoners
Funding: $1,715,550
Location: Toronto
Recipient: Prisoners with HIV/AIDS Support Action Network
Project Details: This project engages prisoners and ex-prisoners in the development of STBBI prevention, harm reduction and health information resources and activities. The project will also provide prisoners with access to hepatitis C and HIV information through case coordination, reintegration support, and group educational activities so they can develop context specific strategies to help reduce their risk of acquiring STBBI.

Project: Peer Support
Funding: $1,658,539
Location: Sioux Lookout
Recipient: Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority
Project Details: This project aims to connect on-reserve First Nations youth to peer support opportunities and networks. The project will provide health education, support harm reduction, and connect youth with needed services. It and will also work to enable a more inclusive and supportive environment for youth and members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community.

Project: Advance Community Alliance '2.0': Optimizing Combination Prevention for GBT2Q+ People
Funding: $1,628,570
Locations: Ottawa and Toronto
Recipients: Ottawa Gay Men's Wellness Initiative/ Initiative pour l'Initiative pour le bien-être des hommes homosexuels d'Ottawa (MAX Ottawa) ($814,285), and AIDS Committee of Toronto ($814,285)
Project Details: This project aims to improve the accessibility and uptake of STBBI health services among gay, bisexual, queer, and other men who have sex with men (cis and trans), and Two-Spirit people (GBT2Q) in Canada. Key activities will include community member-led projects; regional communities of practice to better coordinate STBBI health services; and cultural competence and safety trainings with healthcare and social service providers.

Project: Reaching the Undiagnosed: Accessing Low Barrier HIV Self-Testing + Care
Funding: $1,400,000
Location: Toronto
Recipient: Unity Health Toronto
Project Details: This project aims to develop and implement different models of low barrier HIV self-testing and care options for key populations across Canada to improve adoption and uptake of evidence-based HIV, hepatitis C, or other STBBI prevention measures.

Project: Ending HIV Stigma in Canada – Mobilizing Knowledge with Community Leadership for Action
Funding: $1,300,000
Location: Toronto
Recipient: Unity Health Toronto
Project Details: This project aims to eliminate HIV stigma by developing and implementing interventions to reduce stigma and improve the overall well-being of people living with HIV. The project will increase capacity to provide culturally responsive and culturally safe STBBI prevention, testing, treatment, and care services.

Project: Peer Pathways: Leveraging Lived Experience to Promote Engaged Community Connection
Funding: $1,257,612
Location: London
Recipient: Regional HIV/AIDS Connection
Project Details: This project will provide trained peers to leverage lived/living experience that will create culturally familiar and safe linkages to support key populations' access to effective STBBI services, resources and wraparound supports.

Project: Smarter Sex, Pleasure and Maintaining Health II
Funding: $1,241,750
Location: Hamilton
Recipient: The AIDS Network
Project Details: This project aims to increase the capacity of the existing sexual health program that engages gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with other men, youth and people living with HIV and/or hepatitis C (HCV). The project will increase awareness of STBBI status, and work with service providers in the community to increase their capacity to support key populations in order to improve health outcomes for people at risk or living with HIV/HCV.

Project: ACTion: Integrative HIV & STI Prevention Programming and Capacity Building
Funding: $1,120,000
Location: Toronto
Recipient: AIDS Committee of Toronto
Project Details: This project aims to build the knowledge, skills, and capacity of nearly 2,000 people most affected by HIV, specifically gay, bisexual, and queer cis and trans men, women living with HIV, and young people living with HIV. The project will include educational workshops, in-person and virtual (text/phone/online) interventions, community health forums, and referrals to health and social services.

Project: 3 Spokes - An integrated approach to prevention, testing and treatment
Funding: $1,057,963
Location: Guelph
Recipient: HIV/AIDS Resources and Community Health
Project Details: This project uses a multi-pronged approach to reduce incidence of STBBI in this region through implementing integrated, evidence-based interventions along with the prevention, testing and treatment cascade. The focus of this program will be to connect and support members of the gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men communities, individuals who are transgender, individuals living with HIV, and youth among these populations, with an added focus on individuals who are currently unaware of their HIV status.

Project: Innovation from Strength: the Pan-Canadian PLDI Alliance
Funding: $1,022,486
Location: Toronto
Recipient: Ontario AIDS Network
Project Details: This project will deliver leadership skills and training courses to people living with HIV across Canada both in-person and online to help reduce HIV stigma in individuals and their communities. The project will improve health outcomes and engagement with linkages to care and position people living with HIV as leaders and change-makers in Canada's HIV response, while meaningfully addressing Truth and Reconciliation.

Project: HYPE: HIV Youth Peer Engagement
Funding: $1,000,000
Location: Oshawa
Recipient: AIDS Committee (Durham)
Project Details: This project is designed to provide youth aged 13-29 years with skills and social connections that empower them with greater access to prevention information and positive health outcomes through peer-led HIV education and prevention.

Project: PACKAGE : Faciliter l'accès aux services de prévention combinée culturellement sécurisants pour les GBT2Q à Ottawa-Gatineau
Funding: $1,000,000
Location: Ottawa
Recipient: Ottawa Gay Men's Wellness Initiative/ l'Initiative pour le bien-être des hommes homosexuels d'Ottawa (MAX Ottawa)
Project Details: This project targets 2SGBTQ men who are into men who want to improve their access to STBBI screening, prevention, treatment, and continuing care and support. The project aims to provide a more holistic, client-centered approach to improve the health of communities most at risk for HIV and hepatitis C.

Project: Sex Worker Initiative for Safety & Health (SWISH)
Funding: $992,355
Location: London
Recipient: Regional HIV/AIDS Connection ($469,191); SafeSpace ($264,412); Canadian Mental Health Association, Thames Valley Addiction and Mental Health Services ($258,752)
Project Details: This project will address STBBI prevention and sexual health needs of sex workers through education and support, and through capacity building for service providers to improve cultural safety and reduce stigmatizing attitudes toward those involved in sex work.

Project: Project SNAP - Status Neutral Approaches to Prevention
Funding: $972,165
Location: Kitchener
Recipient: The AIDS Committee of Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo and Area
Project Details: This project is part of ACCKWA's Prevention Programming focusing on the unique sexual health needs of marginalized at-risk youth and gay, bisexual, transgender, and men who have sex with other men in the Waterloo Region. The project combines education, outreach, and community development activities through a peer-led approach to improve population wellbeing, increase service provider capacity, and reduce the burden of STBBI on key populations.

Project: Legacy Project
Funding: $883,196
Location: Toronto
Recipient: Regent Park Community Health Centre
Project Details: This project aims to build chronic disease self-management skills, and enhance access and uptake of care and support for those living with and affected by HIV/AIDS, with a focus on those who identify as racialized and/or as newcomers.

Project: Community Engagement Program - (Name TBD by members of populations engaged)
Funding: $851,690
Location: Peterborough
Recipient: Peterborough AIDS Resource Network
Project Details: This project will connect gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men to local sexual health and health promotion activities through community-led peer engagement and capacity building such as community learning, HIV prevention and education workshops, and culturally safe harm reduction resources.

Project: Peers in Health Project
Location: Toronto
Recipient: Maggie's: Toronto Sex Workers Action Project
Funding: $850,000
Project Details: This project is a case management peer-led navigation intervention, which includes client accompaniments to reduce the structural barriers of stigma and poor access to health and other social services that marginalized sex workers face.

Project: Sustaining Community Mobilization through Integrated Peer Intervention Programs
Funding: $850,000
Location: Brampton
Recipient: MOYO Health and Community Services
Project Details: This project will champion integrated peer interventions that empower 2SLGBTQ+ folks, substance users, young black women, and front-line service providers to actively uptake effective evidence-based STBBI prevention measures.

Project: STBBI Prevention and Education for Migrant Farm Workers in Southern Ontario
Funding: $625,000
Locations: St. Catherines and Toronto
Recipients: Positive Living Niagara ($208,338); Asian Community AIDS Services ($208,330); and Toronto People with AIDS Foundation (Latinos Positivos) ($208,332)
Project Details: This project aims to increase migrant farm workers' (MFWs) knowledge, capacity and uptake of effective STBBI prevention measures through training Peer Champions, conducting education workshops, and organizing annual health fairs.

Project: Peer Engagement Project
Funding: $603,781
Location: Windsor
Recipient: Pozitive Pathways Community Services
Project Details: This project will provide people with lived experience the opportunity to engage in skills-building activities, develop their personal narratives, build relationships with peers and service providers and ultimately become direct educators to their peers, front-line workers and community organizations as a whole. The project aims to reduce stigma and allow peers to connect to better care and engage in self-advocacy.

Project: Hepatitis C in York Region: Systems Navigator and Direct Outreach
Funding: $602,808
Location: Newmarket
Recipient: CAYR Community Connections
Project Details: This project will implement a targeted hepatitis C (HCV) program for people who use drugs, racialized people and migrants, and people living with HIV or HCV. The project aims to increase knowledge, access and uptake of HIV, HCV, and STBBI prevention measures, as well as harm reduction strategies.

Project: Rainbow of Care: Culturally Safe STBBI Prevention for LGBTQ Newcomers
Funding: $440,700
Locations Ottawa and Toronto
Recipients: Capital Rainbow Refuge / Refuge arc-en-ciel de la capitale ($271,050) and Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto (MCC Toronto) ($169,650)
Project Details: This project implements a peer-support framework to connect LGBTQI+ refugees and newcomers to sexual health services, programs, and wellness initiatives.

Project: Anti-Black Racism as Root Cause: ACB Knowledge in the Fight Against HIV/AIDS
Funding: $375,000
Location: Toronto
Recipient: Women's Health in Women's Hands ($187,500); The Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention of Metropolitan Toronto (Black-C.A.P.) ($187,500)
Project Details: This project will provide service providers with the tools, skills and support to self-assess their services through and "Anti-Black Racism" lens to help organizations identify and address any practices and/or policies that perpetuate anti-black racism within the programs.

Project: The East End Prevention Project
Funding: $299,713
Location: Toronto
Recipient: Street Health Community Nursing Foundation
Project Details: This project aims to reduce the transmission of HIV, hepatitis C and other STBBI by providing a low barrier drop-in program with integrated care for marginalized people who use substances in the east end of downtown Toronto. The project will provide prevention-based educational support activities and skill building to manage one's own sexual health through testing, treatment and support services.

Project: Blue Door Project
Funding: $207,088
Location: Toronto
Recipient: Regent Park Community Health Centre
Project Details: The project aims to increase healthcare access for people living with HIV/AIDS with no or limited health insurance by increasing awareness among healthcare providers about the barriers these individuals face, the services offered by the Blue Door Clinic, and the training available to build their capacity to treat this unique population.

Harm Reduction Fund

Through the HRF, a total of 11 projects in Ontario are receiving $6,606,376 in funding.

Project: Building BIPOC Community Readiness for Harm Reduction
Funding: $2,910,001
Location: Toronto
Recipients: Asian Community AIDS Services ($474,332); Centre for Spanish-Speaking Peoples ($473,491); Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention ($474,332); Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention of Metropolitan Toronto (Black C.A.P.) ($529,181); and Action Positive: VIH – SIDA ($474,333) Africans in Partnership ($474,332)
Project Details: This project is a community alliance that will strengthen the capacity of people who use and share substances within the African, Caribbean, Black, Asian, and Latino communities. The project will develop a harm reduction program that addresses the unique needs of this key population.

Project: Peer N Peer
Funding: $895,741
Location: Ottawa
Recipient: Ottawa Gay Men's Wellness Initiative/ l'Initiative pour le bien-être des hommes homosexuels d'Ottawa (MAX Ottawa)
Project Details: This project will provide peer support, navigation programs, harm reduction projects, and overdose prevention activities to GBT2Q men who consume substances to reduce HIV and hepatitis C transmission across the National Capital Region.

Project: UR Worx Harm Reduction Mobile Outreach Service
Funding: $783,662
Location: Kingston
Recipient: Trellis HIV & Community Care
Project Details: This project makes services accessible and available to people living in rural, remote or isolated locations. Delivered by people with lived/living experience of substance use, the program provides harm reduction supplies, naloxone, wound care supplies, basic needs items, education, information and referrals.

Project: ACDR's Harm Reduction Expansion Program: Mobile and Peer Outreach
Funding: $734,255
Location: Oshawa
Recipient: AIDS Committee (Durham)
Project Details: This project will incorporate mobile and peer-based outreach into their existing harm reduction services. Mobile outreach will reduce barriers to accessing services by expanding hours of operation and offering delivery/pop-up services at locations frequented by people who use drugs, as well as remote or underserved areas.

Project: Harm Reduction Satellite Sites
Funding: $717,049
Location: Brampton
Recipient: MOYO Health and Community Services
Project Details: This Project will identify apartments, supportive housing, shelters, etc. that have higher instances of substance use and will recruit and train peers, who preferably live in those locations, to provide harm reduction supports to other residents.

Project: Peer Outreach Support for Substance Users in Niagara
Funding: $570,000
Location: St. Catherines
Recipient: Positive Living Niagara
Project Details: The project aims to provide support to people who use drugs throughout the Niagara Region with the goal of reducing infections, increasing testing rates, and providing gender and culturally appropriate services.

Project: Harm Reduction Peer Worker Project
Funding: $540,000
Location: Ottawa
Recipient: Somerset West Community Health Centre
Project Details: This project will recruit, train and support peer workers to undertake direct service provision to peers under supervision of a Project Coordinator. The project aims to engage with and strengthen the skills, competencies and abilities of people who use and share drug equipment to prevent HIV and hepatitis C.

Project: East Toronto Harm Reduction Outreach Expansion
Funding: $510,000
Location: Toronto
Recipient: South Riverdale Community Health Centre
Project Details: The project aims to engage with people who use and share drug equipment through educational events about overdose prevention, hepatitis C, HIV, and other STBBI. The project will expand outreach to social housing, community hubs, and other hot spots where people who use drugs are not well connected with harm reduction services.

Project: Increasing Peer-Based Leadership in Clinical Programs for People who use Drugs
Funding: $494,976
Location: Toronto
Recipient: Sherbourne Health Centre Corporation
Project Details: This project aims to hire Harm Reduction Navigators (HRNs) with lived experience of injection drug use to collaborate on the development and implementation of outreach activities, provide peer-support, and lead client-facing harm reduction, hepatitis C, and HIV prevention education.

Project: LGBTQ2S+ Harm Reduction Peer Training and Outreach
Funding: $462,168
Location: Toronto
Recipient: Breakaway Community Services
Project Details: This project will target underrepresented LGBTQ2S+ to provide focused harm reduction outreach to men who have sex with men/cisgender gay men. The project members will have the opportunity to gain employment experience, utilize their inherent skills and support harm reduction initiatives in the larger community.

Project: Street Sex Worker's Empowerment Project
Funding: $300,000
Location: Toronto
Recipient: Maggie's: Toronto Sex Workers Action Project
Project Details: This project implements a peer outreach model of support and interventions to provide information, referrals, and harm reduction supplies to reduce the harm and risks of drug use amongst street-based sex workers living and working in downtown Toronto.