Meaningful Engagement as a Cornerstone for Implementing the Key Recommendations to Advance the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights of Women Living With HIV Across Policy, Practice, and Research in Canada.

In 2022, a community-academic collaborative team published 5 key recommendations for developing a national action plan to advance the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of women living with HIV in Canada. In 2023, a national gathering was convened to strategize implementation of the recommendations across policy, practice, and research settings. Discussions highlighted that meaningful engagement of women living with HIV (recommendation 1) is foundational to implementing the other recommendations.

Sex differences in COVID-19 vaccine confidence in people living with HIV in Canada.

Background: Understanding the roots of vaccine confidence in vulnerable populations, such as persons living with HIV (PLWH), is important to facilitate vaccine uptake, thus mitigating infection and spread of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases. In an online survey of PLWH conducted in Canada during winter 2022 (), we reported that the overall COVID-19 vaccination uptake rate in PLWH was similar by sex. Here, we examined attitudes and beliefs towards vaccination against COVID-19 based on sex.

Coronavirus disease 2019 outcomes in a population-based cohort of people with HIV and a matched cohort of people without HIV during Omicron variant waves.

We found that rates of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) testing and reverse transcriptase (RT)-PCR-confirmed infection were approximately 50% higher in a population-based cohort of people with HIV compared with a matched cohort of people without HIV during the Omicron era (2 January 2022 to 31 March 2023) in Ontario, Canada, after controlling for age, sex, residential census tract, and country of birth. Rates of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related hospitalization and/or death were more than double. Differences persisted independent of vaccination, healthcare access, and COVID-19 diagnosis.

Key recommendations for developing a national action plan to advance the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV in Canada.

Action on the World Health Organization requires evidence-based, equity-oriented, and regionally specific strategies centred on priorities of women living with HIV. Through community-academic partnership, we identified recommendations for developing a national action plan focused on enabling environments that shape sexual and reproductive health and rights by, with, and for women living with HIV in Canada. Between 2017 and 2019, leading Canadian women's HIV community, research, and clinical organizations partnered with the World Health Organization to convene a webinar series to describe the World Health Organization Consolidated guideline, define sexual and reproductive health and rights priorities in Canada, disseminate Canadian research and best practices in sexual and reproductive health and rights, and demonstrate the importance of community-academic partnerships and meaningful engagement of women living with HIV.