RESEARCH JUST THE BEGINNING FOR HIV/AIDS ACTIVIST

For an academic, HIV/AIDS researcher and activist Thomas Kerr puts
surprisingly little faith in scholarship itself. "It's hard to make sure
research makes a difference," he says. "You can win points with the
academic community, but having it make an impact on the streets is more
difficult."

Kerr, who graduated from UVic last month with a PhD in educational
psychology, is determined to make a positive impact on the health of
Vancouver's injection drug users, one way or another.

His dissertation investigated how HIV/AIDS medication therapy is used among
injection drug users in Vancouver's Lower Eastside. The sometimes
overwhelming array of pills used to combat the fatal disease is called
anti-retroviral therapy, a pharmaceutical mix with unpleasant side effects
that nonetheless has been proven to extend life.

"A lot of injection drug users are not even offered this therapy by health
care professionals," says Kerr. Often, he says, doctors and nurses believe
people who inject cocaine and heroin are unable to stick to the complicated
drug regimen that anti-retroviral therapy entails. When people fail to take
a full course of medication, the risk of resistant strains developing
increases.

But Kerr's study finds that frequent injection of street drugs has little
effect on whether patients are able to adhere to a pharmaceutical program.
Those who quit taking the medication are more likely to be influenced by
poverty, housing problems or incarceration than by illegal drug use itself.

"Denying someone therapy because they're an injection drug user is no
longer an evidence-based decision," he says. "It's just discrimination."

Kerr has been working with HIV/AIDS patients for more than 12 years, but
became increasingly involved with injection drug users after 1997, when HIV
injection rates skyrocketed to epidemic proportions in the Downtown
Eastside. Since then, he's conducted several studies and worked extensively
with community groups, advocating for safe injection sites and improved
health care for injection drug users.

Kerr is frustrated by the slow rate of policy change, despite his and
others' efforts. In the last six years, he's seen only very small
improvements in conditions for injection drug users. And he feels the
recent police crackdown in the Downtown Eastside has only worsened the
health situation in the area.

"There are bazillions of reports and studies that document the horrific
conditions there," he says, "but politicians often ignore the evidence and
take the politically safe route."

To ensure his work actually does help those he studies, Kerr makes sure he
involves them in his research by consulting drug users on appropriate
research questions, and by providing them with jobs gathering the data. He
also strives to make changes by educating policy-makers and the general public.

"I can't just turn people into numbers, collect data and walk away," says
Kerr, who sees no end to his work in the poverty-stricken Vancouver
neighbourhood. "It's hard not to get intensely involved if you care."