Current Work

On this page, you will find an updated list of our current projects, goals, and objectives, including our scholarly, research and creative activities.

HOPE Centre's Current Objectives

Creating a Centre Advisory Board to serve as an arm’s-length committee guiding the continued research and financial development of the Centre.
Maintaining and updating the HOPE Centre’s website to ensure we stay up to date with our community.
Continue conducting funded research.
Establishing a Terms of Reference and strengthening the Centre’s infrastructure.
Host a Fall community symposium to better support the health of people who live with or are affected by HIV, who are LGBTQ2S+ as well as Black, trans, racialized, Indigenous, and/or live with disabilities, by facilitating community consultation and needs assessment.
Establishing a biannual newsletter and mailing list following the successful launch of our Centre to foster and maintain community engagement with our Centre’s activities.

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Grants Funded by the CIHR

Sexual and mental health of black queer communities during the COVID-19 pandemic

Aim: To examine experiences of Black 2SLGBTQ+ who live in Ontario during COVID-19, specifically access to sexual health resources (HIV testing, PrEP, sex education) and mental health services with an emphasis on surviving and thriving.

Principal Investigator(s): J. Garrett-Walker, Tatiana B.
Ferguson (prior Steering Committee and Black Research Group member)

Community Partners/Advisors/Knowledge Users: Black Queer Youth Collective; Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention, Garfield Durrant, Women’s Health In Women’s Hands, Wangari Tharao, Lance McCready, Mona Loutfy, Trevor Hart

Developing an adapted gender minority stress and resilience model to
explain alcohol use and harms among transgender youth who drink

Aim: To examine experiences leading up to the occasions that transgender youth drink alcohol (such as victimization and discrimination), experiences while they drink (such as mood and drug effects), and experiences after they drink (such as harms, like a hangover, missing school or work, having a fight), using cell phone-based surveys.

Principal Investigator(s): Sarah S. Dermody; Alex Abramovich

Community Partners/Advisors/Knowledge Users: Christina Yager (CAMH), Theo Quinn, Christian Hendershot, Trevor Hart, Elizabeth Saewyc, Jeffrey Wardell

Implementing community-based health promotion capacity for diverse equity-seeking women

Aim: To gather information on how to build and sustain community agency health promotion programs from published research, and from interviews with diverse women, community agency managers, researchers, healthcare managers and policy-makers, then survey participants to prioritize the most important strategies that will lead to greater health promotion capacity in community agencies across Canada.

Principal Investigator(s): Erin Ziegler, Anna R. Gagliardi

Co-Investigators: Allana, Saleema; Amodu, Oluwakemi C; Simpson, Andrea N; Weerasinghe, Swarna D

Examination of alcohol use, cigarette smoking, and mental health disparities in LGBTQIA+ adults in Canada

Aim: Examine patterns of use of alcohol and smoking and compare them between individuals with varying sexual and gender identities in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. In addition, examine how mental health can impact substance use patterns.

Principal Investigator(s): Sarah S. Dermody

Co-Investigators: Trevor Hart and Erin Ziegler

Creating a province-wide 2-spirited model of HIV self-testing, treatment, care, and support: Paving the path towards ending AIDS by 2030

Aim: To engage with 2-spirit people who have and who have not received services from 2-Spirited People of the 1st Nations to expand and improve sexual health services, with the overarching goal to support expansion of the agency to province-wide services

Principal Investigator(s): Trevor Hart

Community Partners/Advisors/Knowledge Users: Keith McCrady and Shiva Acharya, 2-Spirited People of the 1st Nations, & Randy Jackson, Feast Centre for Indigenous STBBI Research

Grants Funded by the SSHRC

Building gender diverse communities - Developing an informed, youth-led, model of care for the trans youth served by the M'Wikwedong Friendship Centre

Aim: This partnership will support a team of Indigenous and racialized trans researchers and our partner, M’Wikwedong Indigenous Friendship Centre, to develop a practice framework and a corresponding actionable plan to address the needs of the Two-Spirit, Indigenous, and non-Indigenous trans youth they serve. The goal to develop a set of actionable items that the M’Wikendong Friendship Centre as well as local health and community agencies can implement to better serve their trans youth.

Principal Investigator(s): Julie James

Community Partners/Advisors/Knowledge Users: M’Wikwedong Indigenous Friendship Centre, practitioners in Grey-Bruce County in healthcare, education, and community services.

Examining the experiences of transgender and non-binary nurses in the workplace

Aim: Explore the experiences and issues faced by transgender and non-binary (TGNB) individuals attempting to access professional nursing education as well as those working/have worked in the nursing field in Canada. Explore how these experiences intersect with their intersectional personal and professional identities. Acknowledging these experiences will help shape support policies that can give better support and protection to Canadian nurses, and those who aspire to get into the nursing field.

Principal Investigator(s): Erin Ziegler

Collaborators: Jennifer-Lynn Fournier, Corinne Hart