Get to know us and our work
This website has been created by a team of researchers at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute with the help of members of the 2SLGBTQ+ communities and progress-focused employees of Canadian Blood Services.
The goal of our research was to listen to the communities impacted by Canadian Blood Services’ policies for men who have sex with men (or MSM) to better understand the impact the blood ban had on them and to find out what barriers the communities needed addressed in order to consider donating plasma if eligible.
There was a clear need from the communities for answers, so this site was created to address those questions/concerns.
Part of our research was also to find out what the lovely staff at donor centres needed to best serve members of the impacted communities. We’ve been working with Canadian Blood Services to ensure our findings are used to change their practices so that gay, bi, and other men who have sex with men can have a positive experience if/when they choose to donate.
In this section, we detail who we are, how we conducted our research, what the objectives were, and what we’ve found.