Atlantic Canada
REGIONAL LEAD: Atlantic Interdisciplinary Research Network
AIRN works to share information and coordinate research efforts in HIV and HCV throughout the Atlantic provinces to improve the quality of life of those affected by HIV and HCV and to shape policy and program responses. Coordinating efforts across the Atlantic region has a much greater impact, particularly with respect to information dissemination, knowledge uptake, and policy development.
Our Goal
To coordinate research efforts to support evidence-based decision-making to influence policies, programs, and practices to prevent the transmission of HIV and HCV, and to improve the quality of life of those affected by HIV and HCV in the Atlantic region of Canada.
Our Objectives
1. Conduct programs of research to increase knowledge and understanding of HIV/AIDS and HCV prevention strategies, interventions, and policy.
2. Enhance collaboration and promote cross-fertilization across disciplines, diseases, methodologies, sectors, provinces, and traditional pillars of research.
3. Provide capacity building opportunities that will increase and enhance skills development in HIV/AIDS and HCV research for stakeholders across the region.
4. Collaboratively shape a regionally relevant research agenda that contributes to the nationally research agenda.
5. Increase knowledge uptake of research findings into policy, practice and services.
Atlantic Canada Team Leads
Jacqueline Gahagan, PhD
Co-Director
Jacqueline Gahagan, PhD
My primary research objectives are: 1. to undertake applied, policy-relevant health promotion research that works toward addressing the determinants of health that can negatively impact on health; and 2. to improve health outcomes among populations often marginalized by mainstream approaches to, and understandings of, health and illness through community-engaged health promotion research.
Lois Jackson, PhD
Co-Director
Lois Jackson, PhD
Lois A. Jackson is a Professor of Health Promotion at Dalhousie University (Halifax, NS). Currently, she is also Co-Director of the Atlantic Interdisciplinary Research Network (AIRN). For over 20 years, she has conducted community-based research with marginalized populations, and her research focuses in particular on people who use substances. Much of her work centres on access to health services, and specifically, harm reduction services. Her research draws attention to the challenges of access for those living outside of large urban centres. She has led a number of nationally-funded studies and has presented and published widely internationally, nationally and locally.
