The Dr. Peter Study
The Dr. Peter Centre (DPC), located in Vancouver’s west-end, is an integrative health-care facility that specializes in providing care for people living with HIV who face multiple and complex barriers to achieving optimal health outcomes. By providing low-threshold support services including a wide range of harm-reduction programming, the DPC aims to reduce inequities, improve treatment outcomes and mitigate the impact of barriers on the health of vulnerable PLHIV.
The Dr. Peter Study is a joint initiative led by the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and the Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation, and brings together a team of academics, people living with HIV, policymakers, health care decision makers and program managers from across Canada. This is a three-year mixed-methods evaluation funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research Partnerships in Health System Improvement program and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research.
The study will identify which aspects of the Dr. Peter Centre model of care contribute to enhanced treatment and health outcomes among persons living with HIV/AIDS. Through the contributions of collaborators from across Canada, the goal of this study is to engage and inform key stakeholders, such as policy makers, service providers and decision makers, by communicating and disseminating study findings that can help improve HIV/AIDS care both nationally and internationally.
The direct objectives of this study are as follows:
- Identify the psychosocial, behavioural and social-structural level barriers to, and facilitators of, optimal HIV treatment outcomes among DPC clients, as well as the specific Dr. Peter Centre services/programs that are associated with improvement in treatment outcomes over time.
- Investigate the effectiveness of exposure to the DPC on HIV treatment, including timely uptake of highly-active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), adherence to HAART and plasma HIV RNA viral load (VL) suppression.
- Explore the narratives and perspectives of DPC clients on how the integration of health and support services affects their quality of life.
Research Summaries
It is well known that social and structural inequities, such as poverty and homelessness, can create barriers to routine HIV care among people living with HIV (PLHIV) who use drugs. Such barriers can contribute to poor HIV-related health outcomes among PLHIV who use drugs and undermine HIV treatment and prevention strategies. In British Columbia, treatment […]
This research is part of the Dr. Peter Study, a project co-led by the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) and the Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation (DPAF). The Dr. Peter Study evaluates the effectiveness of the Dr. Peter Centre (DPC), an HIV day health program and residence facility in Vancouver, Canada funded by the […]
While there are concerns of increasing vulnerability and undue risk taking with compensation, there is a need to explore the impact of different types of compensation on vulnerable populations’ voluntary consent and how it shapes research-related interactions. By exploring the impact of compensation on study participants, the researchers hope to inform the ethical framework around […]