Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Links

• https://utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rdumuqj0uEtEdbnzjU-yG98SuSd6fOMk5

With Pride season approaching, how can we respond to the rising rates of mpox? The Centre for Sexual and Gender Minority Health Research would like to extend an invitation to our virtual panel Navigating Mpox: What We’ve Learned and What’s Next to discuss mpox awareness, public health partnerships and strategies, vaccine uptake, and personal narratives from the mpox outbreak.

Date: May 14th, 3-4pm EST.
Location: Zoom, registration required at this link https://utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rdumuqj0uEtEdbnzjU-yG98SuSd6fOMk5 Live captioning will be available.

Dr. Nathan Lachwosky will present data from Sex Now 2022 and 2024 about communities most and least aware of the mpox virus, vaccine uptake in gay,bisexual and queer men (GBQM), as well as feedback received from community about their wants and needs surrounding the virus at the time of the last outbreak.
Mac Stewart will discuss personal narratives of the 2022 mpox outbreak from interviews conducted with frontline community service providers, infectious disease doctors, public health workers, and GBQM community members. Emerging themes include: both community and health systems partners’ learnings from mpox; including partnerships between community organizations and public health, perception of public health from community, and what can be done for future outbreaks drawing on knowledge and experience from 2022.
Finally, Devan Nambiar will use public health data to address vaccine uptake including the retention rate between first and second doses, the current state of vaccine availability, mpox as an STI, as well as how mpox is transmitted and symptoms of the virus.

There will be a designated Q&A discussion after the presentations. Questions about the event or accessibility requests can be directed to Mac Stewart, Mackenzie.stewart@utoronto.ca

Presenter bios:

Dr. Nathan Lachowsky (he/him/his) is a settler researcher and uninvited guest on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen peoples. He is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria, Canada, and a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar. He also serves as Research Director for the non-profit Community-Based Research Centre Society, which promotes the health of people of diverse sexualities and genders through research and intervention development. Championing interdisciplinary and community-based approaches, Dr. Lachowsky has conducted HIV and sexual health research with sexual and gender minoritized men, including Indigenous Two-Spirit and ethnoracial minority men across Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand. Dr. Lachowsky’s principal area of research focuses on social and behavioural epidemiology and the importance of developing and analyzing mixed methods data to inform public health practice, health service provision, and policy. He conducts interdisciplinary research within a social justice framework in order to achieve health equity for marginalized communities.

Mac Stewart (he/him) is the research coordinator for the Sexual and Gender Minority Health Research Centre housed at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health on Treaty 13 territories. Currently he is coordinating the CIHR-funded Learning from Mpox study, and a collaborator on the CIHR-funded. 2SLGBTQ+ Health Hub, His research interests include trans health equity, sexually transmitted and blood borne infection testing, queer pandemic response, and community-based research.

Devan Nambiar, MSc. is the Manager of Capacity Building & Talent Development at GMSH. He draws from over 30 years of HIV activism, advocacy, and service. His expertise includes developing and leading education and training initiatives to improve queer and trans health, directed to social service agencies and healthcare providers, to increase their capacity to serve queer and trans communities. This includes publications, workshops, CME training modules, seminars, and other resources. He is the Co-Chair of two HIV related studies on anal cancer and HPV, Co-Investigator the 2SLGBTQ Health Hub, and the research on Mpox, collaborator on the prophylactic doxycycline use among gbMSM. In 2023 Devan was awarded the Community Educator Scholars, Conference on Retrovirus & Opportunistic Infections (CROI), US. In 2024, he was invited by CROI to serve as a scholarship reviewer at CROI 2024.