Beyond appeasement: HIV, health and the promise of Black Émancipation
Date: Thursday, May 1
Time: 17:30 – 19:00
Presenter: Dr Winston Husbands, Adjunct Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto
Dr. Husbands has been involved in HIV-related research, advocacy, capacity building and community engagement among Black communities since the 1990s. Currently, his work with the Interim Committee on HIV affecting Black Canadian Communities addresses the systemic barriers and institutional indifference that normalize Black people’s hugely disproportionate burden of Canada’s HIV epidemic. His previous affiliations include leadership roles at major Canadian community-based HIV organizations. Dr. Husbands is an Adjunct Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto and was previously a Senior Scientist at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network.
The Canadian HIV policy and research establishment fundamentally misconstrues the past present and likely future of Canada’s HIV epidemic. Consequently, Black lives and livelihoods are appropriated as raw material for a system that delegitimizes Black people’s claims to equitable health and wellbeing. Over the last 35 years at least, Black communities have experienced a grossly disproportionate burden of Canada’s HIV epidemic while displaced from the organized effort to understand and address HIV. In 2022, a group of Black HIV scholars, frontline healthcare practitioners, and community advocates came together as the Interim Committee on HIV among Black Canadian Communities (ICHBCC) to develop the Black HIV Manifesto and advocate for transformative approaches to HIV-related research and health policy. In this presentation I will: (a) review the crisis in HIV emerging from structurally unjust responses to the epidemic, (b) locate the ICHBCC and its work in the concept of Black emancipation, and (c) issue a call for Black colleagues across Canada to align with the ICHBCC’s efforts.
