In-brief: Accelerating our response: Government of Canada five-year action plan on sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections

View the Accelerating our response: Government of Canada five-year action plan on sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections.

Objective: Accelerate prevention, diagnosis and treatment to reduce the health impacts of sexually transmitted-and blood-borne infections (STBBI) in Canada by 2030

Strategic Goals

• Reduce the incidence of STBBI in Canada
• Improve access to testing, treatment, and ongoing care and support
• Reduce stigma and discrimination that create vulnerabilities to STBBI

Commitments

Moving toward truth and reconciliation with First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples

• Support First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples' priorities.
• Improve availability and accessibility of community-level data on STBBI outcomes.
• Invest in culturally safe prevention, education and awareness initiatives.
• Invest in culturally responsive initiatives, developed to facilitate access to ongoing care and support.

Stigma and discrimination

• Raise awareness of the adverse impacts of stigma and discrimination and support campaigns that promote inclusion and respect.
• Equip professionals with skills to provide culturally responsive services in safe environments.
• Invest in research on stigma and discrimination to inform responses to eliminate transphobia, biphobia and homophobia.
• Promote awareness of the impact of gender-based violence, sexism and racism on vulnerability to STBBI.
• Continue to work toward reducing the over-criminalization of HIV non-disclosure in Canada.

Community innovation

• Support communities in designing and implementing evidence-based front-line projects to prevent new and reoccurring infections.
• Bring high impact interventions to scale so that more people benefit from them.
• Support community-based efforts to reach the undiagnosed and link them to testing, treatment and care.

Reaching the undiagnosed

• Promote culturally safe community-led models to increase testing in remote, rural and northern settings.
• Develop and deploy technology that supports equitable access to testing.
• Facilitate the availability of new testing technologies on the Canadian market.
• Support the uptake and integration of new testing approaches in care systems.

Prevention, treatment and care
(applies to populations that receive health services or coverage of health care benefits from the federal government)

• Provide effective STBBI prevention, testing and treatment to eligible populations according to best practices.
• Provide coverage for treatment and health services for eligible individuals.
• Incorporate harm reduction approaches to meet the public health needs of populations more likely to be exposed to STBBI.
• Facilitate linkage to care and treatment for those individuals transitioning from federal to provincial and territorial health systems.

Leveraging existing knowledge and targeting future research

• Invest in basic, translational, and clinical research, implementation science, community-based, population health and health system research.
• Expand the prevention toolkit - vaccine and biomedical prevention research.
• Invest in emerging and innovative testing and diagnostic technologies and approaches.
• Invest in research on novel therapeutic strategies and the biological mechanisms influencing predisposition to, or persistence of, STBBI, with a continued focus on a cure for HIV.
• Develop First Nations, Inuit and Métis health research capacity.

Measuring impact

• Develop Canada's STBBI targets and indicators with our partners.
• Strengthen national surveillance systems to provide necessary data.
• Report on progress annually.

Guiding Principles

• Meaningful engagement of people living with HIV and viral hepatitis and key populations
• Moving towards truth and reconciliation
• Integration
• Cultural relevance
• Human rights
• Health equity
• Life course approach
• Multi-sectoral approach
• Evidence-based policy and programs