CATIE Blog | HIV and hepatitis C news and opinions

Silence is not neutral: Canada’s leadership has stalled on HIV criminalization reform and communities are paying the price

November 25, 2025 • By Chad Clarke

It has been nearly a decade since Canada first acknowledged that the criminalization of people living with HIV was harmful, outdated and rooted in stigma rather than science. In 2015, when a new government took power at the federal level, there was hope. Momentum. A promise of modernizing the law, of ending the era of prosecuting people living with HIV based on fear instead of facts. I know, because I was there. As a member of the Canadian Coalition to Reform HIV Criminalization, I have spent years in meeting rooms, Zoom calls, consultations and roundtables. We worked with Ministers of...

Estimating how many people in Canada inject drugs

November 17, 2025 • By Public Health Agency of Canada

People who inject drugs that are not prescribed to them often experience complex health challenges and have a difficult time accessing healthcare. To make sure we can provide the services and resources that better support this community, we first need to know how big the community is and where they live. That’s why the Public Health Agency of Canada has created the report, Estimating the population size of people who inject drugs in Canada, which estimates, in 2021: The process for creating these estimates involved several steps, so let’s review them in greater detail. How we estimate the number of...

Advancing awareness: Canadian Positive People Network’s U=U Task Force and the fight against HIV stigma

November 11, 2025 • By Breklyn Bertozzi

At the Canadian Positive People Network (CPPN), we strive to end HIV stigma. We also recognize that people living with HIV provide the movement’s strongest guiding voices. That’s why our U=U Task Force is led by people living with HIV and is dedicated to sharing one of the most groundbreaking messages in public health: Undetectable = Untransmittable. U=U means that when a person living with HIV is on effective treatment and has an undetectable viral load, they cannot transmit the virus to their sexual partners. It’s a message that transforms lives, dismantles stigma and redefines what it means to live...

Serving PrEP realness: How Priss Cryption is using drag to power HIV prevention

November 11, 2025 • By Priss Cryption

As a pharmacist, pharmacy professor and researcher who also happens to be a drag queen, I’ve learned something vital from both the clinic and the club: people listen – and learn – when they feel seen. Through my drag persona Priss Cryption, I’m building programs that meet communities where they already gather, bringing HIV pre‑exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and emerging STI prevention tools like doxycycline post‑exposure prophylaxis (doxyPEP) to stages, bars, classrooms and social feeds. It’s glitter with a purpose. The need is urgent. Canada reported 2,434 new HIV diagnoses in 2023, a 35% increase from 2022, reminding us that progress...

HIV PrEP and cisgender women: Are we meeting their needs?

November 11, 2025 • By Sugandhi del Canto

Despite its proven effectiveness among all genders, awareness of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) remains low among women in Canada, with lower awareness reported among cisgender women. Some key populations with higher HIV incidence have received promotion of PrEP since it was first introduced, but cis women haven’t always benefitted from the same efforts. One possible reason may be that – at least in Canada – the largest burden of HIV incidence among cis women tends to be concentrated within subsets of this population: African, Caribbean and Black women, Indigenous women, and women who inject drugs, for example. The more intersections,...

Sexual health for all: Lessons from the HIV & STI 2025 World Congress

October 16, 2025 • By Dan Miller

This July, CATIE joined 1,500 researchers, advocates and policy makers from around the world for the STI and HIV 2025 World Congress in Montreal, Quebec. Held every two years, the event provides a venue for global leaders in sexual health research to discuss the latest evidence and most pressing challenges in STI prevention, testing and care. Four particularly timely and significant topics stood out, each with important implications for bacterial STI prevention, testing and treatment. DoxyPEP for cis women A key theme of the event was the lack of research on doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis (doxyPEP) effectiveness in cis women and...