Training people with lived experience of these illnesses will help the research team to formulate questions about patients’ needs, said study leader Dr. Yoav Keynan, a professor of internal medicine and medical microbiology and infectious diseases at the Max Rady College of Medicine in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences.

It will also give people from marginalized communities a voice in designing clinical trials that test the effectiveness of different approaches to care.

For example, Keynan said, a trial could look at improving engagement and retention in care by providing sexually transmitted infection care together with opioid agonist therapy, used to treat opioid addiction.

People with lived experience could include those with HIV, experiencing homelessness or struggling with injection drug use, Keynan said.

“This is a first-of-its-kind project in Canada, in that we are combining people with lived experience and researchers to be part of clinical trials training and co-creation,” he said.

“This project is so important right now because Manitoba has the highest rate of new HIV diagnoses in Canada. And HIV and STBBI rates in the Prairie provinces have been the highest in the country for more than a decade and show no signs of slowing down.”

The project recently received a four-year grant of $800,000 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Pan-Canadian Network for HIV/AIDS STBBI Clinical Trials Research.

Keynan said the project is building on and leveraging the success of Increasing Capacity for Maternal and Pediatric Clinical Trials (IMPaCT), a clinical trials training program funded by the CIHR.

“We are excited to partner with IMPaCT and get this project rolling,” he said. “There will be opportunities for people who are community-based researchers, front-line workers and people with lived experience to work together to define what the most important priorities are for them, and it’s bringing more people to the table.”

The funding will help train more than 12 people from Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The one-year immersive training program will include how to develop responsive and respectful clinical research.

The trainees will form the foundation of what is being called the Strengthened Prairies Integrated Knowledge Exchange (SPIKE).

Keynan said that people with lived experience will help researchers and care providers better understand the relationship between HIV and STIBBI transmission rates and systemic factors, such as colonialism, mental health and substance dependency.

“We believe that this type of participatory research is needed to make sure that the questions asked, and the answers we receive, are meeting the needs of the community,” Keynan said.

“It grounds the research in the needs of the people that it’s supposed to serve, and it makes sure that the clinical research is relevant to those who need it most.”

The National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCCID), hosted by the University of Manitoba Faculty of Health Sciences, equips front-line public health workers with evidence to use in their practice and in formulating policy to combat potentially devastating infectious diseases.

The NCCID forges connections between those who generate, and those who rely on, infectious disease public health knowledge. The target audience is public health personnel including practitioners, bench scientists, as well as policy makers and programmers from the grassroots up to national and federal levels.

“Our knowledge translation brings evidence into the hands of public health workers who can then use it in their practice and policy,” said Margaret Haworth-Brockman, Senior Program Manager for NCCID. “We are charged with helping to find that evidence and making it accessible, or summarizing it and putting it into plain language, depending on the needs of the audience.”

NCCID is one of six National Collaborating Centres for Public Health collectively called the National Collaborating Centres for Public Health. Funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada, each focuses on a different area of public health. The centres were established following the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003 to facilitate the use of evidence and emerging research for improved public health policy and practice.

To that end, NCCID generates summaries for policy makers along with in-depth reports among a range of other resources and communication platforms available on its website nccid.ca. Additionally, staff also head out into the field to lead seminars and workshops with front–line personnel. Haworth-Brockman co-led a workshop in Montreal in February with the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada focusing on how to identify and assess whether evidence is credible, in the context of HIV, for instance.

NCCID recently opened its doors on Bannatyne Campus. “The University of Manitoba has been a leader in infectious diseases research and the fit of the centre within the university is in line with the University strategic plan,” said Dr. Yoav Keynan, assistant professor in the departments of Medical Microbiology, Internal Medicine and Community Health Sciences, College of Medicine.

The scientific direction for the NCCID, which will be permanently located in the Basic Medical Sciences Building, is shared between co-scientific directors Drs. Keynan and Marissa Becker, supported by a university management group and an external advisory board.

The centre will offer opportunities for graduate, post-graduates and students in clinical training programs from U of M -as well as from other Canadian academic institutions – with an interest in infectious diseases and public health knowledge translation.

The NCCID has identified five key areas of knowledge translation: emerging infectious diseases and zoonoses; immunization and respiratory infections; antimicrobial resistance; HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI); and other diseases to which vulnerable populations are susceptible, such as tuberculosis.

“Our close links with the department of medical microbiology, community health sciences, internal medicine, the National Microbiology Laboratory, and the National Laboratory for HIV Reference at the JC Wilt Infectious Diseases Research Centre in Winnipeg provide ample opportunities for collaboration,” said Keynan. “We plan to have trainees with diverse backgrounds involved in our projects – who could well be graduate students from the university –  thus enriching the content and building capacity.”