Robert Hogg focuses on identifying ongoing health inequities among vulnerable HIV-positive populations to better meet their unique health care needs.
Since the early 1990s, SFU professor of health sciences Dr. Robert Hogg has been conducting demographic research on British Columbia’s HIV-positive population. With an eye towards influencing health policy decisions and improving health outcomes, his work has earned him an international reputation as a leading population health researcher.
More recently, Hogg’s focus has turned to analyzing health trends among marginalized HIV-positive groups. For instance, Hogg was senior author on a first-of-its-kind study which found that food insecurity increases the risk of death among injection drug users living with HIV/AIDS. He also investigates how access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) influences sexual practice and infection rates among men who have sex with men, and examines how the treatment affects HIV-positive individuals who suffer from age-related diseases such as cancer. The latter is significant as more than half of all HIV-positive individuals in North America are over the age of 50. The findings will help create new strategies to meet the unique needs of these populations.
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research has recognized the importance of Hogg’s work by awarding him with multi-million dollar grants. This includes $2.7 million awarded in 2014 towards the Canadian HIV Observational Cohort (CANOC), the country’s only longitudinal study of more than 10,000 people undergoing antiretroviral therapy in Canada. It also helped him establish the CANOC Collaborative Research Centre which will allow a large team of researchers to continue tracking Canada’s HIV-positive population and further contribute to the understanding of challenges presented by HIV.