Healthy aging with HIV: The role of self-management support.

People living with HIV on antiretroviral treatment have significantly improved longevity, but as a result may also face increasing multimorbidity due to aging and long-term medication use. Thus, care needs for this population have evolved to require a chronic disease management approach in which self-management plays a central role. Here we highlight the importance of expanding self-management support options for people living with HIV, and discuss strategies for implementing and evaluating self-management interventions, outlining potential opportunities, challenges and solutions.

Barriers to gender-equitable HIV testing: going beyond routine screening for pregnant women in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Background: Women and men face different gender-based health inequities in relation to HIV, including HIV testing as well as different challenges in accessing HIV care, treatment and support programs and services when testing HIV-positive. In this article, we discuss the findings of a mixed methods study exploring the various individual and structural barriers and facilitators to HIV counselling and testing experienced among a sample of adult women and men living in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Methods: Drawing from testing demographics, qualitative interview data and a review of existing testing policies and research, this paper focuses on understanding the gendered health inequities and their implications for HIV testing rates and behaviours in Nova Scotia.

HIV counselling and testing in Nova Scotia: the provincial strategy in the context of an international debate.

Nova Scotia, as a small province in Atlantic Canada, provides health care professionals and policy analysts with unique challenges for developing and implementing a strategy for accessible and acceptable HIV counselling and testing. Despite universal health care in Canada, barriers and challenges persist in relation to HIV counselling and testing programs and services in Nova Scotia. It is therefore necessary to examine the unique circumstances in the provision of programs and services in Nova Scotia prior to the possibility of adopting international HIV counselling and testing standards and guidelines being implemented in other jurisdictions.