Overarching Strategy

To build and sustain an environment of individual, social and economic inclusion
for AIDS Vancouver Island clients, target client populations and key stakeholders

Rationale

The overarching strategy to build and sustain an environment of individual,
social and economic inclusion is a way to conceptualize and design prevention,
treatment, care and support services to achieve significant reductions in HIV
and HCV infection and disease progression among vulnerable populations.

As the HIV and Hepatitis C epidemics move through increasingly marginalized
populations, it is clear that social and economic exclusion is both a risk factor
for and a consequence of HIV and Hepatitis C infection, drug use and other harmful
behaviours.

Injection drug users living with HIV and/or Hepatitis C are perhaps the most
vulnerable group of people. While the lived experience of injections drug users
varies with individual capacities, personal practices and social support, the
larger social environment that impacts their lives is shaped by enduring negative
stereotypes of HIV and Hepatitis C, illegal drug use, drug-related behaviour
and the effects of active addiction on daily life.

As a result, many injection drug users are ostracized by dominant society to
the point where they become invisible to society and the very systems of treatment
and care their lives depend upon.

There is a basic ethical imperative to mobilize and maintain all services needed
to “bring people home” (David Roy, Injection Drug Use and HIV/AIDS:
Legal and Ethical Issues, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, 1999) before they
deteriorate irreversibly and die without support. This imperative follows from
the notion that as an inclusive society we have the greatest responsibility
to care for those who are most at risk.

Similarly, as the HIV and Hepatitis C epidemics move through populations with
distinct cultures, value systems and life styles, there is an imperative to
address issues of systemic discrimination, including homophobia and racism;
power imbalances within personal and social relationships; and attitudes towards
sex and sexuality that limit people’s ability to negotiate and practice
safer sex.

Key Roles

AIDS Vancouver Island will help to build an environment of inclusion through
targeted and collaborative actions at the program, agency and community level.
Depending on the specific actions and intended results, AIDS Vancouver Island
and its individual stakeholder groups (clients, staff, volunteers and Board
of Directors) will play any combination of the following roles:

• Advocate
• Educator
• Facilitator
• Service provider
• Partner