Project 171578

HIV prevention work for men who have sex with men (MSM) represents a front-line institutional response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but one that is highly contested and complex in its organization, substance and execution. This study provides a social history of MSM HIV prevention work in Toronto--a city with the highest concentration of HIV infected MSM and one of the most well-developed outreach and prevention programs in Canada. The study will focus on the institutional processes that underpin front-line HIV prevention outreach and service organizations, including: 1) How have MSM HIV prevention programs executed prevention services over time and what has been their relationship to each other and to the state? 2) What expert epidemiological, social scientific and local folk knowledges regarding HIV have emerged over the past 25 years and how have they been translated to prevention work? 3) What impact have external stakeholders, including federal and provincial funders and non-state actors such as the media and ethnic based community leaders, had on the form and substance of prevention work? 4) How has the target MSM subject been constructed in discourse and how has it changed over time? Through interviews with past and present service providers, organizational leaders and policy makers, along with archival research and analysis of prevention materials and organizational documents and minutes, the study will examine the history in which key AIDS Service Organizations (ASO) and ethnocultural community based organizations contested, coordinated and transformed HIV prevention for the MSM population of Toronto.

social history of HIV prevention work for MSM in Toronto, using institutional ethnography