Social inequalities – created through interactions between social identities, social policies, processes of oppression and privilege, institutional conditions and practices – shape health disparities among sub-Saharan African migrant women living in British Columbia. There is a paucity of research with this community in BC. Our proposed project aims to activate community experiences of migrant African women living with and affected by HIV. We seek to understand how racism, gender-based violence and discrimination, HIV-related stigma and migration processes bring about complex social inequalities in women’s post-migration contexts.

The main research objectives of this project are to: determine how structural factors shape the health and social experiences; explore the interplay between gender, race, stigma and migration (status or attitudes); analyze coping mechanisms for HIV-related stigma and discriminations; examine how the experiences of our BC participants resonate with, or diverge from, other settings; and share knowledge to improve care and re-frame or invigorate contemporary HIV prevention efforts. We will use an intersectionality framework to inform our mixed method community-based research approach to critically analyze the structural factors affecting health.

Partners: ACPNET

Methods:
Mixed Methods: Community-Based Participatory Approaches

Funder: Canadian Institutes for Health Research

Current Status: Project planning ongoing.