The Gigii-Bapiimin Study: resilience and the impacts of COVID-19 on health and wellbeing of Indigenous people living with HIV in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

The Gigii-Bapiimin study explored the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health and wellbeing of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people living with HIV in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, two provinces in Canada with alarmingly high rates of HIV infections. Participants (n = 28 in Manitoba and n = 23 in Saskatchewan) were recruited using various methods, including flyers, community organizations, peers, and social media. The qualitative interviews focused on the pandemic's impact on health, access to services, and ceremonies. The data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. The study identified three key themes: (a) resilience and coping; (b) negative impacts on health and substance use; (c) decreased access to health services, HIV care and harm reduction. The participants shared their experiences of social isolation and the loss of community support, which had deleterious effects on their mental health and substance use. The impacts on access to HIV care were exacerbated by poverty, homelessness, and distress over inadvertent disclosure of HIV status. Participants mitigated these impacts by relying on Indigenous knowledges, ceremonies, and resilience within their communities. Service providers must address the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Indigenous people living with HIV and their access to HIV services and ceremonies.

Who's Going to Keep Us Safe? Surviving Domestic Violence and Shared Parenting During Covid-19.

This paper discusses the experiences during COVID-19 of mothers who have young children, are survivors of domestic violence and who share parenting to highlight the further unsafe situations survivors of violence and their children were placed in during the pandemic. Part of a larger mixed methods study, these participants (n = 19) from three Canadian provinces, Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario, engaged in virtual individual one-on-one interviews via zoom. Using thematic analysis, four themes emerged from the data: 1) increased use of coercive controlling behaviors; 2) fear of the unknown; 3) lack of supports; and, 4) finding balance. Direct quotes are used to highlight the meaning of each theme. We outline the challenges these women have that are in addition to those experienced by many during COVID-19 times (increased stress, isolation, disconnect from supports, financial challenges). These include managing the shared parenting arrangements with a former abusive partner who used the pandemic as a further opportunity for coercive controlling behaviors under the guise of the public health order. The mothers were left to manage the difficult exchanges with a former abusive partner and unknown circumstances of the pandemic without guidance and support from legal actors. There will need to be a prioritization of the safety of mothers and their children in post-divorce parenting arrangements both during times of a community lockdown such as during the pandemic and also during non-pandemic times.