HIV and Black People in Canada: Protocol for a Scoping Review (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Race-based health information is necessary to address disproportionate barriers racial communities face and to achieve optimal health outcomes. In Canada, Black people are disproportionately affected by HIV. There is an emerging body of literature on this topic, but a concise summary is lacking. OBJECTIVE The aim of this scoping review is to summarise the evidence on HIV and Black people in Canada. The main outcomes of interest are HIV prevalence, access to care, HIV prevention and treatment, the HIV care cascade, and related HIV outcomes. METHODS We will conduct a scoping review of electronic databases using a systematic search strategy for qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods studies reporting on HIV and Black people in Canada. We will conduct our searches in MEDLINE, Embase, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Web of Science, EBSCO, and Google Scholar for literature published between 1985 and 2023. Grey literature including government reports, dissertations, and other reports will be included. Search results will be screened, and the full text of relevant literature will be retrieved. The extraction of data will be conducted by two reviewers independently. Consensus meetings will be held to resolve conflicts. Our results will be reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for the Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). RESULTS N/A CONCLUSIONS This study does not require human participants. Only secondary data from publicly available sources will be used and thus ethics approval is not required. The findings will be disseminated as a peer-reviewed manuscript, conferences, abstracts, and an MSc thesis.