This article appeared in The Voice on December 12, 1997.
by Justin Beddall
Streetwise AIDS researcher Dr. Steffanie Strathdee is hunting a killer on the downtown eastside. "The second decade of the AIDS epidemic is infecting people who didn't hear the messages of 10 years ago," she says bleakly.
Managing three studies at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS that investigate the spread of the HIV virus among drug users and young gay men, Strathdee has set the pace for AIDS research on the streets of Vancouver.
The modest assistant professor at UBC now finds herself widely regarded as one of Canada's leading AIDS researchers. Her groundbreaking research is spurring public health policy locally and globally.
During last year's International Conference on AIDS in Vancouver she won the Young Investigators Award in Epidemiology for her most recent research on the spread of HIV among inner-city intravenous drug users.
"I argue that we have our own third world here. I see the downtown eastside as a war zone," says the epidemiologist. "The face of AIDS has changed since the early 1980s. HIV is becoming a disease of the poor - the most vulnerable and marginalized population."
The native of Toronto was exposed to the ravages of the disease in 1992 when her Ph.D. supervisor at the University of Toronto died from AIDS. She lost a close friend to the killer disease a year later. "It had a profound influence on my career and solidified my commitment to focus on AIDS," she says earnestly.
Before moving to Vancouver, she was a research assistant with the University of Toronto's study of injection drug users and AIDS. She interviewed 300 injection drug users and volunteered at an AIDS hospice. She emerged streetwise and empathetic.
Strathdee's study of the spread of AIDS on the eastside brought alarming HIV-infection rates to the surface and spurred public health policy. In the wake of her findings, the Health Board declared a medical emergency, citing an estimated infection rate of up to 50 percent among the drug users on the city's eastside.*
As the result of the community activism and research study results, a total of seven million dollars has been allocated to address the epidemic.
The energetic Strathdee shows similar devotion to the Vanguard Project, an ongoing study of the city's young gay men. The study is one of the first to chronicle the group over time and examine the risk factors for HIV infection.
"Younger gay men are growing up not knowing anyone who is HIV-positive. There are new myths surrounding AIDS like 'if I sleep with someone under 30 I'm safe,' " warns Strathdee.
While the two studies focus on the magnitude of the epidemic, Strathdee and her colleagues also educate research participants on the profound implications of their high-risk behaviour. They counsel them on safe sex and resources available for medical care and drug treatments.
The philosophy of the research team is to involve affected stakeholders from ground zero of the project. "We have very active community advisory boards for the two studies that play a vital role in steering research design and interpreting and disseminating the findings," she says.
Strathdee has won global praise for the AIDS research and been named one of the "100 Canadians to Watch" by Maclean's Magazine, but the Randall Coates Epidemiology Prize she won in 1994 touched her in a really profound way. The award is named after her late Ph.D. supervisor.
Yet despite the global implications of her work and the well-earned attention she has received, Strathdee's stated goal is extraordinarily simple - and indicative of the awareness she has of the importance of AIDS victims as people, not merely statistics in the aggregate.
"I hope to look back on my career and think that I may have helped prevent someone from being infected by the HIV virus," says Strathdee.
* Note from the Project Coordinator: This figure is actually an estimate of the HIV prevalence among Vancouver injection drug users, not the incidence rate.
For more information, contact:
Bonnie Devlin
Vanguard Project Coordinator
608 - 1081 Burrard Street
Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6Z 1Y6
Tel: (604)806-8306
Fax: (604)806-9044