Roger Antabe wanted to understand what was making straight Black men in Canada vulnerable to HIV. He knew from previous research that they were not using the drop-in centres that provided services such as testing, counselling and information about preventative medicines like PReP. But he wasn’t entirely sure why.
The question was an important one. Overall, Canada was doing well at keeping HIV at bay. The rate of new infection was quite low compared to the 1980s peak and declining in historically at-risk groups, such as men who have sex with men.
But among some populations, including straight Black men, the number of new cases was trending higher. Statistics showed that a small but significant portion of the transmission in the Black community was occurring through heterosexual contact. Despite making up less than five per cent of the Canadian population, Black people accounted for 25 per cent of the country’s new HIV cases. (Indigenous people, who likewise represent only a fraction of Canada’s population, also account for 25 per cent of new HIV infections.)
How could such small populations account for such a high proportion of infections, wondered Antabe, an assistant professor in the department of health and society at U of T Scarborough. “Fundamentally, there must be something wrong with the way we have looked at HIV, or with Canada’s approach to addressing the issues of HIV,” he says…
