Population Size Estimates Project

2016 report

Background

There are a few key populations in British Columbia that bear a disproportionately high burden of HIV and HCV compared to the general population. These key populations include gay men and other men who have sex with men, people who use injection drugs and heterosexuals who engage in high-risk behaviours.

In order for program planners to determine whether their programs are adequately serving these key populations, one piece of critical information they need to know is the total size of a particular population. However, this information is difficult to come by because many of these populations are often hard to reach or hidden due to certain activities that they engage in.

The BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC), in partnership with PAN, the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BCCfE) and other key provincial stakeholders have contracted the Centre for Global Public Health at the University of Manitoba to develop estimates for the population size for these priority populations in BC. This project will be the first of many steps that will help us understand the coverage of our current prevention programs and identify gaps in services.

This project is divided into two phases. In Phase I, a literature search was performed to identify published peer-reviewed scientific journal articles containing information on size estimations of the three key populations. Phase I activities also informed an interview guide to be used in Phase II with select key informants from health authorities and community-based organizations (CBOs) serving the three key populations.

 

Results

This work allowed us to come with a first set of population size estimates for gay, bi and other MSM and for people who inject drugs provincially and for health regions that can be used for program planning, implementation and evaluation.

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Findings

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  • Presentation made by Dr. David Moore and Janice Duddy at the 2016 PAN Fall Conference
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Learn More

If you want to learn more about this project please listen to the narrated Prezi below (make sure you press the play button):

 

why-pse-importantIf you would like more information about why PSEs are important or examples from around the world of places that have used PSEs for program planning please take a look at these documents:

 

Or finally, you can read this blog post on the project.

If you are interested in learning more or talking with the team about this project please contact Janice Duddy – [email protected] or Dr. David Moore – [email protected]