Challenges to the involvement of people living with HIV in community-based HIV/AIDS organizations in Ontario, Canada.

The Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV/AIDS Principle (GIPA) has been a core commitment for many people involved in the community-based HIV/AIDS movement. GIPA refers to the inclusion of people living with HIV/AIDS in service delivery and decision-making processes that affect their lives. Despite its central importance to the movement, it has received little attention in the academic literature.

The experience of HIV diagnosis among Aboriginal people living with HIV/AIDS and depression.

In this article, we consider how the broad context of Aboriginal people's lives can shape their experience and understanding of their HIV diagnosis. We conducted interviews across Canada with 72 Aboriginal people living with HIV who also reported feelings of depression. Consistent with what has been found in previous studies, participants responded to their HIV diagnosis with shock, disbelief, and often anger.

What do people living with HIV/AIDS expect from their physicians? Professional expertise and the doctor-patient relationship.

This qualitative study identifies the types of professional expertise that physicians are seen to possess in clinical encounters from the perspective of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Respondents looked to their physicians for expert knowledge in 3 key areas: medical/clinical; legal/statutory; and ethical/moral. Physicians were seen to be authorities in each of these areas and their judgments, though not always agreed with, were taken seriously and influenced the health care decisions made by PLWHA.

Giving support and getting help: informal caregivers' experiences with palliative care services.

Objective: Palliative care services have made significant contributions to those needing end-of-life care, but the effect of these services on informal caregivers is less clear. This article reviews the literature and examines the influences of palliative care services on caregivers of people who are dying of cancer, HIV-related illnesses, and illnesses of later life.

Methods: Based on questions that we developed from the literature review, we conducted six focus groups in Toronto, Thunder Bay, and Ottawa, Canada, with informal caregivers about their experiences with caregiving and with palliative care services.

How people with HIV/AIDS manage and assess their use of complementary therapies: a qualitative analysis.

The objective of this article is to provide a qualitative analysis of the practical concerns that people with HIV/AIDS have with regard to their use of complementary therapies. In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with a diverse range of people with HIV/AIDS (N = 46). An inductive grounded approach was used to collect and analyze the data.