PARN-Your Community AIDS Resource Network
159 King Street Suite 302 K9J 2R8 Peterborough, ON, Canada

We are grateful to PARN Peer Ron for sharing the moving story of his journey from learning that he had Hep-C to clearing the virus with the support of PARN's Hep C Services program. Ron is a crucial member of PARN's Hep C team, sharing his experiences with others to help them through their Hep C journeys at regular Drop In sessions. https://youtu.be/rfjJHA7TFP4

The partners working to bring a Consumption and Treatment Services site to Peterborough will be submitting an application for a Site at the old Greyhound bus station at 220 Simcoe Street in downtown Peterborough. In addition, PARN's Harm Reduction Works program and the soon-to-be-launched MSORT team will work out of this location. See all the details in the press release: Peterborough has a new Opioid Response Hub thanks to the ongoing collaborative efforts of numerous comm...Continue reading

This Thursday, we'll be back at 6pm on Facebook and Twitter with a new episode of aidsmapLIVE, 'A long life with HIV'. Joining NAM's Susan Cole are: writer and ...activist Bob Leahy; trans writer and campaigner Juno Roche; HIV advocate and treatment rights campaigner Winnie Ssanyu Sseruma; HIV doctor at The Royal Free Hospital with expertise in ageing issues Dr Tristan Barber; and NAM's Executive Director Matthew Hodson. See more

We at PARN respectfully acknowledge that we live and work on the traditional territory of the Michi Saagig and Chippewa Nations, collectively known as the William Treaty First Nations. On this day, as we gather in our orange shirts, we honour all who survived Canada’s residential school system, and all who did not. We recognize and acknowledge that the harms done by our government’s residential school system were intentional. The system was designed to break families apart, ...designed to tear children down, designed to kill the spirit and if need be, the body. We recognize and acknowledge that this is genocide, a purposeful act of systemic violence perpetrated by the Canadian government and by settler Canadians against the Indigenous people of this land, and that this genocide continues to this day. We recognize and acknowledge that Canada’s current education system continues to do harm. Our system of education is designed to prop up colonialist beliefs of inequity, competition, mass consumption, and white supremacy. It achieves this through the intentional omission of Indigenous culture, practices, belief systems, values, history, and representation. It achieves this by excluding holistic teaching and learning styles, and organic schedules. Finally, we recognize and acknowledge that we have hope for a radical reconciliation with Indigenous people in this country. A reconciliation where all of us who are settlers participate actively and enthusiastically in the unravelling of oppressive colonialist systems and structures to allow for the weaving of a new kind of social fabric in Canada, one where the traditional caretakers of this land hold the threads.

WHAI is excited to support the launch of this webinar series, put on in partnership with the Women and HIV Research Program at Women's College Hospital, Centre for Effective Practice, BC Women's Hospital Health Centre, Women's Health in Women's Hands, Simor Fraser University, BC Centre for Excellence in HIV / AIDS, Viva Women, AIDS Vancouver, and CATIE. Webinar 1) October 1, 2020 9 - 10:30 a.m. PDT / 12 - 1:30 EDT: This webinar will focus on the Toolkit for women living wit...h HIV as a self-health advocacy tool. This toolkit was made lovingly in partnership with women living with HIV. Webinar 2) October 6, 2020 9 - 10:30 a.m. PDT / 12 - 1:30 EDT: This webinar will provide an overview of the toolkit for clinicians to support its uptake and use by healthcare providers caring for women living with HIV. For more information and to register, please visit: En https://www.catie.ca/en/webinar-series-wchc-toolkits Fr https://www.catie.ca//serie-webinaires-wchc-trousses-outils

Peterborough Pride Week kicked off on September 18 and events will be running in the community through September 27. Normally Pride Week is a collection of over 30 community run events book-ended by the Flag Raising at City Hall, and the Parade and Pride in the Park. To ensure the safety of the community during this pandemic, the parade, park and other large gathering events have been cancelled for Pride Week 2020. In response, Peterborough Pride has chosen Pride in Other S...paces as the theme for this year’s week of events and has developed unique ways to build connection in our community during the COVID-19 pandemic. This year there are a number of virtual events available to attend to show your Pride and support for Peterborough’s 2-SLGBTTQI communities. All Peterborough Pride events have been planned in alignment with the City of Peterborough’s safety guidelines; https://www.peterborough.ca//city-services-during-covid-19 For a full listing of Pride Week events in Peterborough, please visit: http://peterboroughpride.ca/events/

PARN is proud to be a signatory on the San Francisco Principles a document created in solidarity with the 1983 Nothing About Us Without Us dictum of the Denver Principles which focuses on the urgent demands of Long-Term HIV/AIDS Survivors. People over the age of 50 are the largest cohort living with HIV in North America, and these Principles are a response to the experiences of people who have been living with HIV since before 1996. Long-term survivors experience accelera...ted aging due to the ravages of HIV on the immune system and comorbidities can appear in long-term survivors some twelve years earlier than in their negative counterparts. At age 50-54, cognitive and physical abilities diminish much more quickly in long-term survivors and they become more prone to cardiac arrest, frailty (osteoporosis), balance issues, diabetes, CMV infection, and innumerable other conditions. These health concerns are exacerbated by the intersectional problems of poverty, depression, the costs of and access to healthcare, unstable housing, mental health concerns including substance use, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. From the preamble to the Principles: Now we are in our fifties, sixties, seventies and beyond, living lives we never expected to have, lives that have been riddled with isolation and loneliness, the expense of medications and healthcare visits, declining physical health, untreated substance use and mental health problems. We live with a sense of having been forgotten, shoved to the side by AIDS researchers and service providers, unknown to geriatricians. We survivors are routinely ignored at HIV/AIDS conferences, while funding for research and services is consumed by prevention techniques and programs. While we recognize the importance of prevention, and heartily support the goal of ending the AIDS pandemic, we insist that prevention not drain resources from caring for those of us who have lived with HIV for thirty, thirty-five, forty years. Our surviving still faces an economic system that continues to evict, separate, and destabilize us. The burden of compounding healthcare costs, a fragmented healthcare system, and increasing costs of living continue to export many of us away from adequate healthcare delivery systems. To view the San Francisco Principles, please visit: https://drive.google.com//1JyemOXcjkskEOE6Tn1UsYRzkL/view To sign on to the Principles, please visit: https://docs.google.com//1FAIpQLSdh7OqTkjkxE6a21/viewform

Hello PARN Page Followers! Despite several mask donations we continuing to have clients who are asking for masks! So in turn, we are continuing to seek donations of cloth masks of various sizes for our very vulnerable clients. Please consider us! ... Thanks for much to those who have contributed to date! If you are able to help please email [email protected] to arrange receipt of your donation. Thanks so much for sharing and caring. Take good care x