The pilot study called A-Track (Aboriginal Track), is the first of it’s kind in Canada to look at HIV prevention, testing and care, along with sexual and drug use indicator among Aboriginal people.

A-Track Media Release – March 28 FINAL

Fact Sheet A-Track – March 28 FINAL

Hello Friends,

I hope that you are all enjoying the Winter Season, embracing the cold and fighting the flu. Just rest, take fluids and keep warm!

We were saddened to hear that David Lee and Dolan Badger were called to the Spirit World. They were strong advocates of the Aboriginal HIV movement in Canada and provided a passionate voice to ending stigma and discrimination. We will always remember them for their fight for social and human rights justice. To their many friends we offer our prayers during this difficult time.

At the last AGM we were given direction to move towards a holistic approach to HIV, other sexually transmitted and blood born infections and to related health factors, such as chronic disease, mental health, and aging. A holistic approach must include attention to the non-medicinal, cultural and spiritual determinants of health. We have taken steps to include these changes while recognizing the valuable experiences of those in the moment. A holistic approach should provide better care, treatment and support healthy outcomes.

AGM planning is underway. The theme “Circle of Life: Holistic Healing Begins With Us” recognizes that strong communities and families begins with strong, healthy Individuals. You are encouraged to look at www.caan.ca as the required applications are online for completion. Put together an abstract for presentation.

Thank you to a professional and caring staff who are the key to success and I thank them for their dedication. To the Board who provide leadership and guidance on our journey.

Ken

CAAN Expanded Mandate

We are pleased to announce that CAAN will be expanding its mandate to begin including other Sexually Transmitted Blood Borne Infections (STBBIS), Hepatitis C (Hep C), Tuberculosis (TB), co-morbidities, aging and mental health.  Since the adoption of key resolutions by the membership at the last AGM, and the Board and Staff strategic planning sessions held in Winnipeg, in November of 2012, we have begun to plan, develop and implement the holistic model approach to these health issues into our work plans.

Through a multi-pronged approach, CAAN’s plans include in brief: updating our MOU’s with other national and regional organizations, researching, gathering and updating existing resources to make them culturally appropriate, and updating existing work plans to include this expanded mandate in the day to day work of CAAN.

Watch our Facebook and website for more information coming soon.

Community Readiness

The “Addressing Community Readiness and Implementing Culturally Appropriate Interventions” project was extended by PHAC until March 2014.  This project expanded its work to begin including STBBIs, Hep C, TB, aging and mental health.  The two key activities for this project includes: 1) updating existing resources and making them culturally appropriate and; 2) to continue training other front line health and social service providers on where they are in terms of addressing their community readiness and implementing culturally appropriate risk  intervention strategies.

CAAN has researched and reviewed various existing resources already been developed and plans are underway to update the resources to make them culturally appropriate.  More information and updates will be .

Inuit Five-Year Strategic Plan on Hep C, Kuujjuaq Quebec

I had the pleasure of representing CAAN at the Inuit 5-year Hep C Development strategy hosted by Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, January 20-23, 2013 in Kuujjuaq, Quebec.  Over a period of three days, the strategy was developed through the collaboration of many stakeholders including CAAN, Public Health Agency of Canada, CATIE, Inuit Tapirit Kanatami, and other numerous organizations representing key stakeholders.

Key Priorities and Actions were identified and CAAN will work with Pauktuutit to ensure that the strategy is implemented.  Many of the key priorities and actions such as Awareness, Promotion, Prevention, Screening and Care, Surveillance and Research will be incorporated wherever relevant and will guide the work of CAAN as we address Hepatitis C.

This year, CAAN will develop and lead a national campaign during the Hepatitis C Awareness month this May.  “There is a need for targeted messages that resonate among different age groups and sub-groups of Inuit society and a need to raise awareness among frontline health providers.”  We will expand this work to include other Aboriginal groups across Canada.  To that end CAAN will work with our national steering committee to develop resources regarding Hep C.

Aboriginal AIDS Awareness Week 2012 (AAAW) 

Since the last newsletter, CAAN successfully delivered a national AAAW campaign.  This year, we saw an increase in media coverage as we worked towards “Getting To Zero.  Zero New Infections, Zero AIDS Related deaths, Zero Stigma and Discrimination”.  Through the development of various marketing materials; Four (4) posters, Public Service Announcements delivered by National Assembly of First Nations Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo and Honorable Leona Aglukak, Minister of Health, website, Facebook, and a national awareness campaign held in cities across Canada including Winnipeg, Halifax, Iqaluit, Regina, Toronto and Victoria, the national campaign was well received.

Please see www.aboriginalaidsawareness.com for more information.

CAAN Research is Driven by Our Membership

In a relatively short period time CAAN’s Research and Policy Unit (RPU) has grown from a few projects that helped us to learn about research into a well respected and very busy team of full- time and part-time researchers and trusted consultants. Our staff numbers remain small – 4 full time staff shared with the RPU and the AHA Centre, two project coordinators (one of these people still need to be hired) and several fantastic consultants.

We decide what kind of research to pursue or support based upon direction from our membership. We review AGM resolutions, consult with the APHA Advisory Committee and other standing organizational committees including: the National Aboriginal Youth Council on HIV & AIDS, the CAAN Voices of Women and the International Indigenous Working Group on HIV & AIDS. Research has become a very important part of CAAN’s work and provides an opportunity to learn more about: how to approach our work and how to understand the issues that our APHA members and community stakeholders are facing and what some solutions might be.

For some projects, CAAN is leading the work and the grant funds are managed by our offices. For other projects, our allies directly manage the funds and we are part of the decision making team and we also participate in projects where our role is to bring the voice of the Aboriginal HIV & AIDS community and we are one of many people on a team. There are different responsibilities associated with each of these roles but ultimately, our most important job is representing our membership in a respectful and professional manner.

We are working on including more about our work on the CAAN website to share updates about all of our work. In the meantime, the National Toolkit at www.caan.ca offers a great resource with summaries and full copies of our reports and resources. We have also created Facebook Profiles for staff members – Renée At Caan, Caan Era Patrick Brownlee and Caancbr Managers. Check us out from time to time!

To offer some perspective about the research we are currently involved in, we are investigating:

- APHA Leadership strategies;

- how to Communicate effectively through social media;

- what Decolonizing Methodologies look like from the perspectives of Aboriginal and African, Caribbean and Black community members;

- the impact of living with and growing up with HIV in the family;

- the priorities for developing good housing policy and design for Aboriginal People living with HIV & AIDS.

In addition, we are also supporting research regarding sex work; women and HIV; GIPA in rural communities; Aboriginal Youth prevention and leadership; Inuit community-readiness to engage in research; stress management for women living with HIV & AIDS; applying epidemiology models; and contributing to the Aboriginal-Track (A-Track) secondary surveillance project.

Finally, staff are very busy developing the foundation of the AHA Centre and linking with the membership of the research team – check out Marni and Sherri’s newsletter article. We will be promoting our latest research report regarding Alcohol Use and Access to Treatment with a video featuring David Lee and Lyanna Storm in April 2013 in Vancouver. Watch for more news about Wise Practices IV on our website, Facebook and in your email!

Marni Amirault and Sherri Pooyak, Community-based Research Managers (CBRMs)

Well, here we are. We’ve all (hopefully) survived the advent of the new Mayan calendar and the transition from 2012 to 2013. With the pause of the holiday season now behind us, we are rolling up our sleeves at CAAN as we settle deeper into the work required to get the Aboriginal HIV & AIDS Community-Based Research Collaborative Centre (AHA Centre); our new research home; fully functional!

Please keep reading to see opportunities to look forward to participating in and some of the projects that have been keeping us busy over the past few months.

National Aboriginal Research Advisory Council (NARAC)

The National Aboriginal Research Advisory Council (NARAC) is currently being populated to replace the former NRAC (CAAN’s National Research Advisory Committee). Like NRAC, NARAC will guide the research work that CAAN engages in, ensuring that we conduct ethical, community-relevant research that does good for our community. NARAC will also serve as an ethics-board, review seed grant applications submitted to the AHA Centre, help the AHA Centre team ensure that all of the work supported through this new funding opportunity is ethically sound.

We hope to achieve a balance between the voices on our council: First Nations, Inuit and Metis; elder, youth and everyone in between; not to mention community and academic. We also strive to have even representation from coast to coast to coast. There are 12 seats open on NARAC; please help us meet our challenge!

If you (or someone you know) think you may be interested in this opportunity, please contact Sherri Pooyak (sherrip@caan.ca) or Marni Amirault (marnia@caan.ca) for more information and an application form.

AHA Centre Peer Research Associates (PRAs)

The AHA Centre is getting set to hire and train Peer Research Associates (PRAs) who will help with our on the ground work in several regions across Canada.

We are also looking for a PRA mentor. This will be someone who has past experience working with a research team as a PRA and who can guide AHA Centre staff to work with PRAs, ensuring that the needs of PRAs are met throughout the lifespan of the project.

East – Quebec; Ontario; New Brunswick/PEI; Newfoundland and Labrador, Nunavut.

West – Manitoba; Saskatchewan; Alberta; British Columbia and North West Territories/Yukon.

PRAs will help the AHA Centre build and maintain relationships with local AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs) by:

• increasing capacity building opportunities in his/her region through facilitation of capacity building and grants crafting workshops;
• engaging in general communication between The AHA Centre and local Aboriginal ASO;
• assisting the AHA Centre to greatly diversify the reach of the Centre; and
•  contributing towards CAAN’s highly evaluated Wise Practices.

For more information and an application form please contact Sherri Pooyak sherrip@caan.ca or Marni Amirault marnia@caan.ca.

This year CAAN is continuing to provide and promote the successful Community Readiness Risk Reduction Model campaign to assist both on and off-reserve peoples address HIV and AIDS, Hepatitis C (HCV) and Sexually Transmitted and Blood Borne Infections (STBBIs).

The harm to Aboriginal individuals, families and communities resulting from substance use is immense – reaching across and through families, communities and generations. There are many ways harm from drug use is experienced including the break-down of relationships and families, violence, loss of financial security, illness and disease, and death. Moreover, there is a significant and rapid rise of HCV, HIV and AIDS and STBBIs through injection drug use in Canadian Aboriginal communities – most view this as a health crisis, while some even view it as an epidemic.

Our communities need to have the capacity to respond to these issues in meaningful, culturally appropriate and community-specific ways. Most Aboriginal Peoples can agree that it is honorable and practical to work towards reducing the harms associated with substance use for individuals, families and communities. Accordingly, the CAAN has developed a training project to assess the stages of readiness of agencies/communities for undertaking valuable harm reduction initiatives and policies within their agencies/communities.

Using training materials such as CAAN’s Assessing Community Readiness and Implementing Culturally Appropriate Interventions within Aboriginal Communities Train the Trainers Facilitator Guide; Harm Reduction Implementation Guide; and the ‘Community Readiness Model’ developed by the Tri-Ethnic Center for Prevention Research, the aim of this training is to build capacity among the On- and Off-reserve organizations and communities to conduct community readiness assessments and community readiness assessment training related to assessing the stages of readiness for implementing culturally-appropriate harm reduction interventions to support HCV, HIV and AIDS and STIBBIs  prevention efforts.

CAAN is working to organize 4 national train-the-trainer sessions throughout the year.  Monique Fong, CAAN’s Community Readiness Coordinator and Ed Bennett, Community Readiness Project Supervisor will be organizing and providing the training in the hope that Front-line Aboriginal organizations or Provincial Territorial Agencies, and/or First Nation communities will be participate in this train-the-trainer session to gain capacity and acquire resources to assess community readiness for implementing culturally-appropriate interventions in support of HCV, HIV and AIDS and STBBIs prevention efforts and to deliver the training to others to conduct this community readiness assessment work.

For more information on the Assessing Community Readiness Training sessions please contact Monique Fong at Monique@caan.ca or Ed Bennett at EdB@caan.ca

Monique Fong
Community Readiness Project Coordinator

Ed Bennett
Community Readiness Project Supervisor

Trevor

By Trevor Stratton, Consultant and Coordinator of the IIWGHA

The Global Scene – What’s Next?

Profile of International Indigenous Working Group on HIV & AIDS Growing

Marama Pala, Executive Director of INA (Māori, Indigenous & South Pacific) HIV/AIDS Foundation in New Zealand was appointed to the Community Programme Committee (CPC) for the XX (20th) International AIDS Conference 2014 (AIDS 2014) to be held in Melbourne, Australia. Marama is a Māori Indigenous woman living with HIV and is the Co-Chair of the International Indigenous Working Group on HIV & AIDS (IIWGHA).

The first time Marama held this position was in preparation for AIDS 2012 held in Washington, DC. This is another great stride for IIWGHA’s goal of advocating for the involvement of Indigenous people in decision-making about HIV and AIDS.

Marama’s appointment means that recognition of Indigenous-specific HIV issues will be increased and strengthened globally once again. It is very important that IIWGHA promote Indigenous specific approaches to the social determinants of health not only at the International Indigenous Pre-conference on HIV & AIDS but also within the International AIDS Conference itself.

The United Nations

For the first time ever, IIWGHA will attend the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). The Native Youth Sexual Health Network (NYSHN) has been kind enough to partner with IIWGHA to host a side event at the UNPFII on HIV and sexual health.

IIWGHA and NYSHN hope to encourage the delegates at this important forum to address Indigenous HIV issues. Our engagement at the UNPFII will also help IIWGHA to ground this work in Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous concepts of health and Indigenous wise practices. Ken Clement from Canada, Elisa Canqui from Bolivia and Michael Costello from Australia are IIWGHA Leaders who will be working hard to raise the profile of HIV & AIDS at the UNPFII.

21st IUHPE World Conference on Health Promotion

This year from August 25 to 29, the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) and Thai Health Promotion Foundation (ThaiHealth) are hosting the 21st IUHPE World Conference on Health Promotion in Pattaya, Thailand. IIWGHA will be there.

Clive Aspin, Indigenous Research Fellow at Bullana, The Poche Centre for Indigenous Health at the University of Sydney, Australia is also a Māori Leader of IIWGHA and will be presenting at this year’s IUPHE Conference.  This year an Indigenous Health Promotion Sub-Plenary and a four-day Indigenous stream “Idea Factory” workshop is in the works. The conference aims to contribute to the development of equity and social justice across the globe by offering a unique platform for dialogue on the best investments for health between participants from various sectors from all over the world.

The Indigenous Sub-plenary titled “Indigenous leadership in the development of health promotion: achieving health equity through partnerships and community engagement”  will include presentations on Community-based health promotion in response to high rates of HIV among Indigenous peoples; Indigenous Health Promotion Competencies; and Community-led interventions to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, and feature Indigenous speakers from Canada, host Thailand and other nations.

Building the Foundation

Meanwhile back in Canada, IIWGHA is developing a communications and social marketing strategy for the IIWGHA to raise visibility of HIV and AIDS issues among Indigenous Peoples globally. This step is another important building block as IIWGHA builds a solid foundation. This work takes all of us.

Stay tuned for more adventures of the International Indigenous Working Group on HIV & AIDS….

By Doris Peltier APHA Liaison (CAAN) – Winter 2013

I would like to preface this article by highlighting some acronyms you might see me use.  Too often within the Aboriginal HIV and AIDS movement we assume that most people know who we are referring to when we say APHA (Aboriginal Person Living with HIV/AIDS).  Or in this instance, you might see me use, OFNAPHA, by simply adding Ontario First Nations to APHA.  You will also see me refer to a very important acronym, GIPA (Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV/AIDS).

Secondly, I want to give you a snapshot on the Aboriginal response to HIV in Ontario and tie this into the reasons why we felt it important to host the 2012, and now the 2013 summits.  A Tale of Two Summits is really about the ‘greater involvement of persons living with HIV and AIDS’ as it is the culmination of a vision by a core group of OFNAPHAs, supported from the onset, by an on-reserve group of five educators with the Ontario First Nations HIV/AIDS Education Circle (OFNHAEC).  This group (OFNHAEC), representing 133 First Nations communities in Ontario, is funded by Health Canada under the umbrella of the Chiefs of Ontario.  It needs to be noted that OFNHAEC has always utilized the GIPA principle, and been mindful in utilizing First Nations people living with HIV and AIDS in their work.  The greatest challenge for the OFNHAEC is that they are funded to deliver HIV and AIDS education and awareness to the 133 First Nations communities in Ontario, within five provincial territorial organizations, which include Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians; the Union of Ontario Indians; Nishnawbe Aski Nation, Treaty 3 and the Independent First Nations.   The work that OFNHAEC provides is not direct client services, but is focused on HIV and AIDS education, awareness and resource development for First Nations people communities.  Their biggest achievement to date has been the annual and ongoing peer to peer youth training sessions.

There is another important player within the province, namely the Ontario Aboriginal HIV/AIDS Strategy (OAHAS), whose primary role is to deliver frontline client services, within the urban areas in Ontario; they are funded provincially by the AIDS Bureau of Ontario, under the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care, from specific dollars earmarked for urban Aboriginals within the province.  OAHAS has on occasion worked with First Nation communities, but only when invited.

Now this is when the tumultuous issue of jurisdiction comes into play, and can sometimes be a highly political issue, simply because the funding for OAHAS and OFNHAEC come from two pots of money, off-reserve and on-reserve.  This jurisdictional issue in turn creates huge gaps in services for those OFNPHAs who might be living in their first nation, and many are not receiving quality healthcare and support for their HIV, and in some cases are falling through the cracks.

As a group of HIV positive activists working with the on-reserve group, some of us have had direct experience living in our home communities, and have recognized a multitude of barriers that continue to hinder access to care, treatment and support for our peers who choose to live in their home communities. This is the reason why we began to envision the need for a summit, so that we could hear directly from OFNAPHAs about what they are experiencing in terms of barriers to quality healthcare within their communities.  This is a complex issue, and is probably playing out in other regions of Canada.   Suffice to say, it is not a new issue, and we as the core group are saying, enough talk, it is time for action!  We anticipate leveraging the support of political bodies, like the chiefs in Ontario, to begin to see improvements, allowing for increased HIV support services within the First Nation communities.

2012 – Paddling Forward: Navigating Seamless Reconnection of our Communities:

When I first stepped out as an HIV/AIDS activist a few years ago, if someone would have told me, that Chiefs in one tribal region would one day pass a resolution to endorse the ‘greater involvement of people living with HIV’ (GIPA) Principle, I probably would have been a tad skeptical.   But, this is exactly what happened in 2012 within the Anishinabek Nation: Union of Ontario Indians (UOI) political territory. The UOI is a political advocate for 39 member First Nations across Ontario and is the oldest political organization in Ontario, tracing its roots back to the Confederacy of Three Fires, which existed long before European contact.  I like to think that the passing of this historical resolution by the UOI Chiefs would not have been possible without the foresight and support of UOI Deputy Grand Chief Glen Hare.   We invited the Deputy Chief to conduct the ‘opening welcome to the territory’ at last year’s summit.  Unlike other leaders, he decided to stay on and listen in on our deliberations, and from there he became our greatest political champion for First Nations People Living with HIV and AIDS in his region.

Other notable milestones included, firstly that the event was totally organized by APHAs; secondly, for the first time in the history of the Aboriginal HIV/AIDS response in Ontario, on-reserve and off-reserve agencies worked together by setting aside imposed jurisdictional barriers to support the vision of the core group of APHA leaders.  The underlying vision for hosting a summit of this type was to create a forum to discuss how to create seamless linkages to care for First Nations people living with HIV within the province.  As is the case in other provinces, indigenous care, treatment and support models are still non-existent within First Nations communities due to the stigma and discrimination of HIV at the community level, and hence people are not receiving the care they should be getting and are falling through the cracks.

2013 – Moving Forward: Navigating the Portage:

This year, the summit will once again be held in North Bay on March 4-6, 2013, and is entitled, Moving Forward: Navigating the Portage.  In the first summit, we recognized the traditional importance of waterways that at one time, kept our people connected, without today’s jurisdictional divides that keep us separated. This year, in using ‘navigating the portage’, we are essentially acknowledging our connection to the land, what a portage may signify in our journeys as First Nations People Living with HIV/AIDS.  It is about acknowledging the barriers and finding ways to navigate and traverse the portage together.  For me, at a metaphorical level, ‘paddling forward’ and ‘navigating the portage’ denotes the journey of life and the act of moving forward on a continual basis.  At another level, it is an indigenous worldview, and hopefully resonates as such for others.

It is always important to acknowledge my peers, particularly the core group that shared this journey.  I feel very privileged to be working alongside such humble, powerful and yet gentle warriors.  Now that we are about to host our second summit, it is even more important to acknowledge their tireless dedicated work which has involved many hours of preparation and many meetings of the steering committee.  In the interests of their privacy and confidentiality, they will remain unnamed, but you know who you all are.  Miiquetch!!!

love lift us up where we belong, where the eagles cry on a mountain high, love lift us up where we belong, far from the worlds we know, up where the clear winds blow (Buffy Ste Marie)

New NAYCHA B.C. 

We are very excited to welcome, Christina Alec, our new B.C. representative from Prince George as the newest member of our Youth Council. We are looking forward to introducing her to our partners and Aboriginal communities in our HIV and AIDS work across Canada and North America!

Living with HIV is not the end of the world, if anything, I think it’s another chance in life to help make a difference! – Christina Alec

Aboriginal AIDS Awareness Week 2012 Review: 

The theme of 2012’s AAAW was “Getting to Zero. Zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS related deaths.” CAAN’s launch ceremonies took place on World AIDS Day, December 1st, 2012 in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Aboriginal youth took an active part in shaping the events and workshops that happened across Canada. For example, NAYCHA is very proud of having worked with the government of Iqaluit to pass a Proclamation that December 1st-5th will now be AAAW in Iqaluit annually!

NAYCHA released a joint youth statement between NAYCHA and the National Native American Youth HIV/AIDS Council in the United States. The youth statement was launched in Winnipeg and NAYCHA kept an active online presence throughout AAAW with Facebook and Twitter updates about lowering HIV and AIDS and the related stigma and discrimination concerning Aboriginal communities. For a copy of this youth statement please visit: http://aboriginalaidsawareness.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/AAAW_youth_media-info_112811.pdf

Young Eagles Soar Community Based Research Project: 

NAYCHA has been working on Young Eagles Soar, a community based research project made possible by a catalyst grant provided from the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR). The research project is greater involving Aboriginal youth and increasing research on HIV and AIDS in relation to Aboriginal youth’s access to prevention efforts, education, care, treatment and support for HIV and AIDS. Utilizing this grant, NAYCHA has planned two in-person meetings (October 2012 in Regina, SK; January 2013 in Victoria, B.C.) to answer questions that arose around developing an Indigenous youth research focus for HIV and AIDS: 1.) What role do relationships play in Indigenous youth lead research on HIV and AIDS?; and 2.) What does youth empowerment look like within HIV and AIDS prevention, education, treatment and support? We look forward to sharing our results with CIHR, CAAN and Aboriginal communities in the future!

Look for more updates from the National Aboriginal Youth Council on HIV and AIDS (NAYCHA): 

Visit us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/CAAN-National-Aboriginal-Youth-Council-on-HIVAIDS/122473174461818?fref=ts

Follow us on twitter:  @NAYCHA_CAAN 

Contact our National Youth Coordinators for more information:

Jessica Danforth
jessicad@caan.ca

Carrie Robinson
carrie.robinson@gmail.com 

The AHA Centre is proud to announce Wise Practices IV!

Wise Practices is the only Aboriginal-specific Community-Based Research Gathering of its kind in Canada where a wide range of delegates (Community; AIDS Service Organizations; Academia; Government; policy workers; health care etc.) are able to meet and learn from one another. Stay tuned for more information!

Date: September 25 – 27, 2013

Location: Delta Bessborough, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

For more information: Stay tuned!

AHA Centre logo contest:

Get your creative juices flowing! The AHA Center is looking for a logo that will represent our work. The prize for the winning logo will be $100.00 with a profile of her/his artist and artwork on our website. For more information on how to enter, please contact Patrick Brownlee by e-mail: patrickb@caan.ca. Deadline for submissions is January 31, 2013.

The AHA Centre is looking for representatives to sit on National Aboriginal Research Advisory Committee (NARAC):

We invite those who are interested in providing leadership, vision and direction in all areas of research within CAAN, drawing from past and continued involvement in the Aboriginal and/or the Community-based Research community to contact us about how to get involved. Members are asked for a 2 year commitment. For more information and an application form please contact Sherri Pooyak sherrip@caan.ca or Marni Amirault marnia@caan.ca.

The AHA Centre is looking for Peer Research Associates (PRAs) in several regions:

East Coast- Quebec; Ontario; New Brunswick/PEI; Newfoundland and Labrador, Nunavut.

West Coast – Manitoba; Saskatchewan; Alberta; British Columbia and North West Territories/Yukon.

PRAs will help the AHA Centre build and maintain relationships with local AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs) by:

• increasing capacity building opportunities in his/her region through facilitation of capacity building and grants crafting workshops;
•  engaging in general communication between The AHA Centre and local Aboriginal ASO;
• assisting the AHA Centre to greatly diversify the reach of the Centre; and
• contributing towards CAAN’s highly evaluated Wise Practices.

For more information and an application form please contact Sherri Pooyak sherrip@caan.ca or Marni Amirault marnia@caan.ca.

CIHR Funding calls:

3 Catalyst Grants are available to the Aboriginal CBR stream. Each grant awarded is up to $33,000 each. Deadline for submission: April 15, 2013.

For more information: Catalyst Grant: HIV/AIDS Community-Based Research (2013-2014)     

4 Master Awards for Community-Based Research are available to the Aboriginal stream. Each grant is awarded up to $17,000 for two up to two years. Deadline for submission: April 01, 2013.

For more information: Master’s Award: HIV/AIDS Community-Based Research (2013)

6 Operating Grants are available. These are open Operating Grants, but there are many priority announcements including: Two Eyed Seeing; First Nations, Inuit and Métis Health and HIV. Registration Date: February 01, 2013 Deadline for submission: March 01, 2013.

For more information: Operating Grant: Winter 2013 Priority Announcement (Specific Research Areas)

2 Planning Grants each are available for several priority areas, including First Nations, Inuit and Métis and HIV. Each grant is $25,000 each for a year. Deadline for submission: February 15, 2013.

For more information: Planning Grants: Winter 2013 Priority Announcement (Specific Research Areas)

Travel Awards: Travel awards are available through The Institute of Aboriginal Peoples’ Health. No deadline is given for these awards.

• $2,500 for applicants from Northern and remote areas;
• $2,500 for applicants to international (outside North America) meetings, conferences or symposia; and,
• $1,500 for all other applicants.

For more information: http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/36094.html

Please circulate this News Blast  widely!