Black & Blue Festival
8th Annual
Health Summit
8th Annual
Health Summit


Featuring Noted Chicago AIDS researcher
Dr. David G. Ostrow
Dr. David G. Ostrow
The Black & Blue Festival 8th Annual Health Summit will be held on Saturday, October 6, from 1-5 PM at Hotel Delta Montreal.
This mini symposium unites researchers, social scientists, health care givers and party attendees to discuss a variety of health issues related to the party scene. Participants will give 20 minute presentations followed by a question and answer period.
The program will include:
David G. Ostrow, M.D., Ph.D., FAPA
Chicago
Dr. David Ostrow discovered (in the mid-1970’s) the sexual transmission of hepatitis B among homosexual men through his work as the co-founder of the first sexually transmitted disease clinic for gay and bisexual men, now known as the Howard Brown Health Center of Chicago. Because of that discovery, he was invited by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to help organize the early epidemiological studies of the sexual transmission of hepatitis B and the follow-up efficacy studies of the first vaccine against a sexually transmitted virus. As part of this work, Dr. Ostrow trained both the CDC scientists (including Drs. Harold Jaffe, James Curran and Donald Francis) and the multi-site research staffs in the elicitation of a complete sexual practices history from gay and bisexual men and wrote the first article on taking a complete sexual history. This experience proved crucial in the early epidemiological studies of AIDS among homosexual men, and Dr. Ostrow was one of the founding principal investigators of the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) in 1983. That study, which has produced more than 2,000 scientific publications on the natural history of HIV infection in gay/bisexual men and continues to chart the natural history of treatment of HIV with current highly active anti-retroviral therapies (HAART), led directly to Dr. Ostrow’s extensive research on behavioral and mental health aspects of HIV infection and the links between non-intravenous ("recreational") drug use (NIDU) and HIV infection and prevention. Most recently, a team headed by Dr. Ronald Stall (PI from the University of Pittsburgh), Dr. Ostrow and other MACS investigators have received a 3-year grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to use the MACS data to chart the natural history and long term health effects of methamphetamine use among both HIV+ and HIV- MSM.
Patrick O’Byrne,
RN Ottawa STI Pilot Project
Patrick O’Byrne is a Public Health Nurse at the Sexual Health Centre in Ottawa and a Lecturer and CIHR Doctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Health Sciences, School of Nursing at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He will provide an overview of the findings of a research project that piloted the use of self-directed urine drop-off STI kits within two bathhouses in a Canadian urban centre.
Pierre-Paul Tellier, M.D. & Kat Coric
Montreal, “SYPHNON Syphilis Education & Outreach”
Dr Tellier is a family physician, director of the McGill Student Health Services and director of the Office of Student Affairs at the Faculty of Medicine. He coordinates the on site medical team for all the major BBCM events. With artist Kat Coric he co-founded the Black & Blue Festival Annual Health Summit and developed all the BBCM health education material. Tellier’s most recent sex ed endeavours have included the McGill Shagalicious Shop, a CD ROM on sex and contraception and a frosh week condom campaign each fall. Together with Kat Coric he produced SYPHNON; a syphilis testing event in Montreal this past summer.
Kat Coric is a Montreal multidisciplinary artist and producer. She has been a health advocate in the LGBTQ community since 1996. Her art explores issues relating to HIV / AIDS, harm reduction and the underground club culture. She produces special events to foster education around these issues. In 2005 along with Jean-Pierre Pérusse, Coric produced and stared in the film, Leatherella Against the Evil Crystal Queen, a five-minute sci-fi feature about the dangers of crystal meth. She is currently working on a public service announcement about crystal meth for TV. Pierre Tellier & Kat Coric will present an overview of SYPHNON.
Thomas Haig, Ph.D.
Action Séro Zéro
Thomas Haig is a community-based researcher specializing in HIV prevention and gay men’s health. His interests include the development of harm reduction measures to address drug use in the gay community, and the role of face-to-face communication in health promotion. He will provide an overview of the prevention work Séro Zéro has undertaken in Montréal’s gay saunas over the past decade and the future orientation of this work.
André-Léonard Nantel
Montreal, Documentary Film About Addiction
Montreal actor with a background in education, André-Léonard Nantel had witnessed first hand the destructive nature of addiction. In 2006 the suicide of a close friend left him shocked and questioning life around him. The rise in popularity of crystal meth in Montreal and abroad further convinced him that there was work to do to better educate youth about addiction issues. He will provide an overview of his upcoming documentary film.
Information:
Saturday October 6, 2007, 1- 5pm
Hotel Delta Montréal 475 President-Kennedy Avenue
Free Admission – Open to all
(Mostly in English)
(514) 924-4527
kat.coric@videotron.ca

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