Dr. Angela Kaida is a Simon Fraser University Distinguished Professor and the Scientific Director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Institute for Gender and Health. Dr. Kaida’s research interests pertain to understanding the impact of expanding access to HIV treatment and prevention services on sexual and reproductive intentions, behaviours, and outcomes of HIV-affected individuals and couples in high HIV prevalence global settings and in Canada. You can read some of her...

Kim Canady is an HIV/AIDS activist, advocate, mother, and wife born with HIV. Throughout her adolescence, Kimberly became a member of many HIV/AIDS awareness organizations. These organizations include Theo, Heat, UNICEF, YWCHAC, co-chair of YACAC, spokesmodel for New York State Department of Health campaign HIVSTOPSWITHME, and Love Heals. As an African American woman born and raised in Brooklyn, Kimberly faced having to combat the ignorance and stigma that surround HIV and AIDS within her...

Bridgette Picou is a nurse with several years of HIV and infectious disease experience and an avid blogger with The Well Project. She also writes a guest column with Positively Aware Magazine called "Being Bridgette." In addition to her LVN license, Bridgette has been certified as an AIDS Care Nurse (ACLPN) and received the 2022 Patrick Kenny Certified Nurse of the year award. Serving as the President of the Greater Palm Springs Chapter of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (ANAC), it's...

Ciarra “Ci Ci” Covin is a mother, advocate, and lover of all human beings. Diagnosed with HIV at the age of 20, Ci Ci has curated a life of HIV and mental advocacy through both her lived experience and education. Ci Ci is program manager at The Well Project, past Ambassador for the CDC’s Let’s Stop HIV Together Campaign, and Owner of Healing Is Voluntary, LLC. In these roles, Ci Ci has been able to connect with other leaders from around the world to further the mission of destigmatizing HIV...

Lezlie Lowe began her freelance radio, newspaper, and magazine career in 1996. She has penned and produced pieces on urban rats, roadkill cemeteries and, prominently, public toilets. Lowe has been a finalist and multiple winner at the Radio Television Digital News Association Awards, the Atlantic Journalism Awards, and the Canadian Association of Journalists Awards, and has taught journalism at the University of King's College since 2003. Her first book, No Place To Go: How Public Toilets...

Chelsea Wald has repeatedly plunged into the topic of toilets since 2013, when editors first approached her to write about the latent potential in our stagnating infrastructure. Since then she has traveled to Italy, South Africa, Indonesia, and Haiti, as well as throughout the Netherlands and the United States, in search of the past and future of toilet systems. With a degree in astronomy from Columbia University and a master’s in journalism from Indiana University, Chelsea has more than...

Dr. Caetano Dorea is a Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, at the University of Victoria. His interests and expertise are at the crossroads of environmental and public health engineering. You can learn more about his Public Health & Environmental Engineering (PH2E) Lab research here, his publications here, and follow him on Twitter here. We talk about the stigma around sanitation-and in particular 'shit'-and the 'flush and forget' culture. Caetano discusses the stigma...

Professor David J. Brennan is the Associate Dean, Research at Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto. He is the founder and director of the CRUISElab, an interdisciplinary, community-based social work research lab dedicated to addressing the sexual, mental, physical, and emotional health of gay, bisexual, two-spirit, cis- and trans-gender men who have sex with other men (GB2M). Dr. Brennan has been directly involved in the HIV epidemic since 1983 in many social work...

Dr. Steffanie Strathdee is Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences and Harold Simon Distinguished Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. She co-directs UCSD’s new center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH), Global Health Institute and the International Core of UCSD’s Center for AIDS Research. An infectious disease epidemiologist, she has spent the last two decades focusing on HIV prevention in marginalized...

As a community organizer, artist, activist, academic and at times a “professional”, Jessica Lynn Whitbread is interested in doing work that creates spaces for dialogue about social justice and social change. She does this through public installations, consciousness raising, workshop development and facilitation, engaging in direct action, policy review, research and any other method that allows a variety of stakeholders to engage in a diversity of ways. She believes that acts of kindness are...

Sabby Duthie and John E. Johnson are authors of 'Elder Abuse: You have a role to play'.  This first-of-its-kind book undertakes the uncomfortable conversation that elder abuse is widespread and very real. John E. Johnson, a retired lawyer, and Sabby Duthie, a former retirement-home owner, share real stories from families of different generations and backgrounds. In this podcast, we discuss elder abuse and how stigma toward the elderly can fuel elder abuse and create a lack of awareness...

Annie Philpott is a public health professional, pleasure propagandist and ‘guerrilla girl’ of HIV prevention. She founded The Pleasure Project in 2004,  an international education and advocacy organization working to eroticize safer sex. The Pleasure Project builds bridges between the public health world and the pleasure and sex industry, and help to develop the evidence base for a sex-positive and pleasure-based approach to sexual health and rights. You can read more about her work here and...

Dr. Keosha T. Bond is an Assistant Medical Professor in the Department of Community Health and Social Medicine at the CUNY School of Medicine.  She is a trained behavioral scientist and sexual health educator who has centered her work on the complex intersections of race, sexuality, social justice, and health equity among individuals of marginalized genders. You can learn more about her research here, and follow her on twitter here. We talk about Keosha's work on the intersection of gender...

Associate Professor Steve Bell is a Principal Research Fellow in the UQ Poche Centre for Indigenous Health at the University of Queensland. He is an applied health and social researcher with 20 years’ experience of qualitative, participatory and ethnographic research on sexual, reproductive and maternal health, HIV and other infectious diseases. He is currently working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in remote, regional and urban settings across Australia, and excluded and...

Calvin Hudson Hwang is an award winning Taiwanese Canadian director, producer and founder of SUPRE.  SUPRE aims to empower underpowered voices and present  often unheard points-of-view with insight, vulnerability and authenticity. They find unconventional ways to produce films to make them openly accessible for everyone to watch. Calvin's directorial work includes What Flowers They Bloom (2021), Miracle, Baby (2019), Exiting Hell Bar (2017), My Best Dress (2013), and Vestiaire (2011). You can...

Laura Ferguson is an assistant professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California, the director of the Program on Global Health & Human Rights and the director of research at the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health. Her research focuses on understanding and addressing health system and societal factors affecting health and the uptake of health services, as well as how attention to human rights can improve health outcomes. She collaborates with a range of...

 Elder Valerie Nicholson, of Mi’kmaq, Haida, Gypsy and English descent, is a storyteller and researcher, an advocate and an artivist.  She works at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS as a co-principal investigator and community-based researcher, and brings her knowledge back to her communities. She is an HIV Older for the Weaving Our Wisdom (WOW) study, and actively works with the Canadian Coalition to Reform the Criminalization of HIV and the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network. She is an...

Dr. Ayden Scheim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health. He is also an Affiliate Scientist in the Centre on Drug Policy Evaluation and Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute at St. Michael’s Hospital (Toronto) and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Western University. He studies the impacts of social, policy, and healthcare environments on the health of stigmatized...

Dr Nitika Pant Pai is Associate Professor at McGill University’s Department of Medicine, Division of Clinical Epidemiology and a Physician Scientist at the MUHC Research Institute. She has been working in diagnostics for 20 years in the United States, Canada, South Africa, and India, with a focus on point of care diagnostics for HIV, Hepatitis C, Hepatitis B, HPV, and bacterial sexually transmitted infections. She develops and incorporates digital innovations, implementation science, Bayesian...

Dr. Amrita Daftary is an Assistant Professor of Global Health at York University and a social and behavioural global health researcher. Dr. Daftary examines health care seeking and caregiving practices for tuberculosis (TB) and HIV.  Her projects are based in a number of global settings, particularly South Africa, India, and Canada. Learn more about her research here and you can follow her on Twitter. Dr. Daftary discusses TB and how this preventable and curable illness still affects more...

Dr. Patrick Sullivan, Professor of Epidemiology at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health, has spent two decades investigating HIV.  He implements innovative technology – mobile phones, tablets, text messaging, and online tools – into HIV and AIDS care...

Dr. Julie Pulerwitz is the director of the Population Council’s HIV and AIDS program, where she provides leadership for a portfolio of research that generates evidence to inform HIV programs and policies around the world. Among her contributions, Dr....

Chris Beyrer MD, MPH, is the Desmond M. Tutu Professor of Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. He is a Professor of Epidemiology, International Health, Health, Behavior and...

Dr. Daniel Buchman is a Bioethicist and Independent Scientist in the Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute at CAMH. He is also an Assistant Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto,  a member of the...