Jacqueline Gahagan
Biographic Data
| ID | 155026 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jacqueline Gahagan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jacqueline |
| FAMILY NAME | Gahagan |
| SIGNATURE | GAHAGAN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Dalhousie University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6483-7916 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 35 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Awareness, acceptance, and impact of undetectable equals untransmittable (U = U) among people living with HIV across Canada
Undetectable equals Untransmittable (U = U) is a pivotal tool for HIV prevention, stigma reduction, and improving quality of life for people living with HIV. This study examined awareness, acceptance, and impact of U = U among people living with HIV across Canada, and explored differences across sociodemographic characteristics. From 2018-2024, 1,083 participants were recruited in-person and online using snowball sampling. Peer researchers conduc…
Health Equity Considerations for Screening and Diagnosis of Sexually Transmitted and Blood-Borne Infections Impacted by the Covid-19 Pandemic
Introduction: Timely access to sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STBBI) testing and linkages to care are directly dependent on confirmed medical diagnosis, referred to as the first element of the cascade of care. Access to STBBI testing was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in a variety of ways. This pandemic mobilized some public health innovations, reducing roadblocks in the STBBI cascade of care. Objective: The overarching objec…
Access and Inclusion
Relatively little is known about how physical and social environments influence access to and inclusion in educational and leisure activities for students with a mobility-related physical disability attending a post-secondary institution. Understanding how environments shape access is important because educational and leisure activities affect one’s emotional, social, mental, and physical health. The aim of this qualitative exploratory study was …
Advance care planning among older LGBT Canadians
Advance care planning (ACP) in North America often takes place in a cultural context of great ambivalence about death and dying, challenging efforts to discuss end-of-life care desires and preparations for death. Such challenges are amplified for sexual and gender minority older adults who often lack connections to traditional heteronormative systems of support. The extent of ACP preparation (completed documents, discussions) and their predictors…
Gender and Trajectories of Marital Breakdown
The relatively sparse literature has documented various challenges international migration poses to martial stability, yet we know little about immigrant women's experiences with marital breakdown. Drawing data from a qualitative study of Chinese economic immigrants to Canada, this article explores women's experiences of navigating the processes of this life circumstance, and of how gender-including their senses of changing gender roles in post-i…
Housing as a determinant of health for older LGBT Canadians
This article shares key focus group findings from a national study focused on the housing needs of older (55+) lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Canadians. LGBT populations have and continue to face systemic discrimination and barriers to appropriate housing across the life course, and yet little attention has been given to solutions. Many older LGBT adults live alone, face poverty, and have limited familial supports which impact on …
Help-Seeking to Cope With Experiences of Violence Among Women Living With HIV in Canada
Using baseline data from a community-collaborative cohort of women living with HIV in Canada, we assessed the prevalence and correlates of help-seeking among 1,057 women who reported experiencing violence in adulthood (≥16 years). After violence, 447 (42%) sought help, while 610 (58%) did not. Frequently accessed supports included health care providers ( n = 313, 70%), family/friends ( n = 244, 55%), and non-HIV community organizations ( n = 235,…
Safety and danger
People who use substances (PWUS), and specifically individuals who use injection drugs and/or smoke crack cocaine, experience risks which harm reduction programmes can help reduce. Prior to implementing harm reduction programmes, however, it is critical to understand how programme users and others in the community perceive the programmes as their perceptions may influence implementation. A mixed-methods study asked PWUS and key informants about t…
Expanding access to HIV testing through Canadian community pharmacies
Retrospectively registered with clinicaltrials.gov (NCT03210701) on July 6, 2017
Awkward Choreographies from Cancer's Margins
Canadian and American population-based research concerning sexual and/or gender minority populations provides evidence of persistent breast and gynecologic cancer-related health disparities and knowledge divides. The Cancer's Margins research investigates the complex intersections of sexual and/or gender marginality and incommensurabilities and improvisation in engagements with biographical and biomedical cancer knowledge. The study examines how …
Requirement for Meaningful Engagement of First Nations, Inuit, Métis, and Indigenous Peoples in Publications About Them
The Cancer’s Margins Project
Sexual and/or gender minority populations (LGBQ/T) have particular cancer risks, lower involvement in cancer screening, and experience barriers in communication with healthcare providers. All of these factors increase the probability of health decisions linked with poor outcomes that include higher levels of cancer mortality. Persistent discrimination against, and stigmatization of, LGBQ/T people is reflected in sparse medical curriculum addressi…
Rethinking "Chinese Community" in the Context of Transnationalism
Improving pathways to primary health care among LGBTQ populations and health care providers
A framework of intersectionality and health equity was used to interpret and analyze the survey data. The key findings indicate the need to continue improving pathways to primary health care among LGBTQ populations, specifically in relation to additional training and related supports for health care providers who work with these populations
Minding the gap
Health and social care providers' perceptions of Black-Canadian parent-youth sexual health communication has important implications for addressing knowledge gaps in the provision of services to young people and their parents. Providers' perceptions are crucial as they often act as advisers in tailoring programmes or services to the perceived needs of parents and youth. To understand these perceptions, 17 semi-structured in-depth interviews were c…
Motivators of couple HIV counseling and testing (CHCT) uptake in a rural setting in Uganda
The motivators for CHCT uptake included the perceived benefit of HIV testing, sickness of a partner or child, preparation for marriage, lack of trust among couples and men involvement in antenatal care. Greater attention to enhancers of CHCT programming is needed in trying to strengthen its uptake
Envisioning Women-Centered HIV Care
Exploring the intersections of transnationalism, sexuality and HIV risk
Young people and injection drug use
Understanding and Measuring LGBTQ Pathways to Health
Health research traditionally has focused on the health risks and deficits of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) populations, obscuring the determinants that can promote health across the life course. Recognizing, appropriately measuring, and rendering visible these determinants of health is paramount to informing appropriate and engaging health policies, services, and systems for LGBTQ populations. The overarching purpose of …
The utility of resilience as a conceptual framework for understanding and measuring LGBTQ health
While we fully acknowledge that the resilience of LGBTQ populations is central to advancing LGBTQ health, there remains much work to be done before the concept of resilience can be truly useful in measuring LGBTQ health
I feel like I am surviving the health care system”
There is an urgent need to conduct research on the health needs, lived experiences, and outcomes of LGBTQ populations in Nova Scotia to address gaps in our knowledge of their unique health needs. In moving forward, it is important that future health research take an intersectional, strengths-based perspective in an effort to highlight the factors that promote LGBTQ health and wellness across the life course, while taking into account the social d…
Sex and gender matter in health research
Attention to the concepts of 'sex' and 'gender' is increasingly being recognized as contributing to better science through an augmented understanding of how these factors impact on health inequities and related health outcomes. However, the ongoing lack of conceptual clarity in how sex and gender constructs are used in both the design and reporting of health research studies remains problematic. Conceptual clarity among members of the health rese…
Working “Upstream”
The use of cognitive-behavioral interventions that aim to improve men's health-seeking behaviors via women-a trend that grows increasingly troublesome as gender inequality persists-cannot address the deep-seated social, economic, and political inequalities contributing to the spread of HIV/AIDS, such as sexism and poverty. Such methods often rely on generalizations about men and women and regard female empowerment as a key goal, despite employing…
Revisualising ‘porn’
The Internet offers an invaluable opportunity to re-imagine ideas, constructs and disciplines to create innovative sexual health promotion interventions. To gain insight into what young adults (aged 19-28) may be seeking in online sexual resources and approaches, this study explored how young people perceived their sexual health to be influenced by their consumption of the highly utilised sexual medium of Sexually Explicit Internet Movies [SEIM].…
Requirement for Meaningful Engagement of First Nations, Inuit, Métis, and Indigenous Peoples in Publications About Them
Walking along beside the Researcher”
Research ethics boards and institutional review boards (REBs/IRBs) have been criticized for relying on conceptions of research that privilege biomedical, clinical, and experimental designs, and for penalizing research that deviates from this model. Studies that use a community-based participatory research (CBPR) design have been identified as particularly challenging to navigate through existing ethics review frameworks. However, the voices of RE…
Rethinking "Chinese Community" in the Context of Transnationalism
Access to harm reduction services in Atlantic Canada
Housing as a determinant of health for older LGBT Canadians
This article shares key focus group findings from a national study focused on the housing needs of older (55+) lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Canadians. LGBT populations have and continue to face systemic discrimination and barriers to appropriate housing across the life course, and yet little attention has been given to solutions. Many older LGBT adults live alone, face poverty, and have limited familial supports which impact on …
HIV Counselling and Testing in Nova Scotia
Far as I Get Is the Clothesline”
This qualitative study explored the unique ways in which caregiving and leisure are conceptualized and mediated among diverse groups of female caregivers (n = 98) in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. Data were obtained through 17 focus group discussions between March and June of 2002. Findings reveal that the contexts within which caregivers experience the health effects of caregiving create meanings, opportunities, and challenges for leisure.…
HIV Counselling and Testing in Nova Scotia
Barriers to gender-equitable HIV testing
Drawing on the current gender and HIV literatures, in conjunction with our data, we argue that an enhanced, gender-based, context-dependent approach to HIV counselling and testing service provision is required in order to address the health equity needs of diverse groups of women and men living in various settings. Further, we argue that enhanced HIV testing efforts must be inclusive of both men and women, addressing uniquely gendered barriers to…
Challenges and opportunities to integrating family members of injection drug users into harm reduction efforts within the Atlantic Canadian context
Access to harm reduction services in Atlantic Canada
Walking along beside the Researcher”
Research ethics boards and institutional review boards (REBs/IRBs) have been criticized for relying on conceptions of research that privilege biomedical, clinical, and experimental designs, and for penalizing research that deviates from this model. Studies that use a community-based participatory research (CBPR) design have been identified as particularly challenging to navigate through existing ethics review frameworks. However, the voices of RE…
Everyone just keeps their eyes closed and their fingers crossed”
The findings of this study reveal that parent-child communication regarding sexual health promotion within Black families in Nova Scotia remains varied and is heavily affected by a myriad of intersecting determinants of health faced by Black youth and their parents. Health promotion interventions aimed at fostering and supporting parent-child communication on sexual health must simultaneously target both parents and youth and further, such effort…
Keeping the focus on safer practices
Improving psychosocial health and employment outcomes for individuals receiving methadone treatment
It is important to consider how the contexts of interventions might elicit and/or support clients' engagement. Further research is needed to explore how an individual's background (e.g., involvement with different interventions over an extended period) may influence engagement. Long-term engagement may be necessary to sustain some positive outcomes although how long is unclear and requires further research. Engagement can occur without complete a…
Sex and gender matter in health research
Attention to the concepts of 'sex' and 'gender' is increasingly being recognized as contributing to better science through an augmented understanding of how these factors impact on health inequities and related health outcomes. However, the ongoing lack of conceptual clarity in how sex and gender constructs are used in both the design and reporting of health research studies remains problematic. Conceptual clarity among members of the health rese…
Working “Upstream”
The use of cognitive-behavioral interventions that aim to improve men's health-seeking behaviors via women-a trend that grows increasingly troublesome as gender inequality persists-cannot address the deep-seated social, economic, and political inequalities contributing to the spread of HIV/AIDS, such as sexism and poverty. Such methods often rely on generalizations about men and women and regard female empowerment as a key goal, despite employing…
Revisualising ‘porn’
The Internet offers an invaluable opportunity to re-imagine ideas, constructs and disciplines to create innovative sexual health promotion interventions. To gain insight into what young adults (aged 19-28) may be seeking in online sexual resources and approaches, this study explored how young people perceived their sexual health to be influenced by their consumption of the highly utilised sexual medium of Sexually Explicit Internet Movies [SEIM].…
Troubling the boundaries
Policy scoping reviews are an effective method for generating evidence-informed policies. However, when applying guiding methodological frameworks to complex policy evidence, numerous, unexpected challenges can emerge. This paper details five challenges experienced and addressed by a policy trainee-led, multi-disciplinary research team, while conducting a scoping review of youth Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Hepatitis C primary and secondary p…
The utility of resilience as a conceptual framework for understanding and measuring LGBTQ health
While we fully acknowledge that the resilience of LGBTQ populations is central to advancing LGBTQ health, there remains much work to be done before the concept of resilience can be truly useful in measuring LGBTQ health
I feel like I am surviving the health care system”
There is an urgent need to conduct research on the health needs, lived experiences, and outcomes of LGBTQ populations in Nova Scotia to address gaps in our knowledge of their unique health needs. In moving forward, it is important that future health research take an intersectional, strengths-based perspective in an effort to highlight the factors that promote LGBTQ health and wellness across the life course, while taking into account the social d…
Motivators of couple HIV counseling and testing (CHCT) uptake in a rural setting in Uganda
The motivators for CHCT uptake included the perceived benefit of HIV testing, sickness of a partner or child, preparation for marriage, lack of trust among couples and men involvement in antenatal care. Greater attention to enhancers of CHCT programming is needed in trying to strengthen its uptake
Envisioning Women-Centered HIV Care
Exploring the intersections of transnationalism, sexuality and HIV risk
Young people and injection drug use
Understanding and Measuring LGBTQ Pathways to Health
Health research traditionally has focused on the health risks and deficits of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) populations, obscuring the determinants that can promote health across the life course. Recognizing, appropriately measuring, and rendering visible these determinants of health is paramount to informing appropriate and engaging health policies, services, and systems for LGBTQ populations. The overarching purpose of …
Improving pathways to primary health care among LGBTQ populations and health care providers
A framework of intersectionality and health equity was used to interpret and analyze the survey data. The key findings indicate the need to continue improving pathways to primary health care among LGBTQ populations, specifically in relation to additional training and related supports for health care providers who work with these populations
Minding the gap
Health and social care providers' perceptions of Black-Canadian parent-youth sexual health communication has important implications for addressing knowledge gaps in the provision of services to young people and their parents. Providers' perceptions are crucial as they often act as advisers in tailoring programmes or services to the perceived needs of parents and youth. To understand these perceptions, 17 semi-structured in-depth interviews were c…
The Cancer’s Margins Project
Sexual and/or gender minority populations (LGBQ/T) have particular cancer risks, lower involvement in cancer screening, and experience barriers in communication with healthcare providers. All of these factors increase the probability of health decisions linked with poor outcomes that include higher levels of cancer mortality. Persistent discrimination against, and stigmatization of, LGBQ/T people is reflected in sparse medical curriculum addressi…
Rethinking "Chinese Community" in the Context of Transnationalism
Expanding access to HIV testing through Canadian community pharmacies
Retrospectively registered with clinicaltrials.gov (NCT03210701) on July 6, 2017
Medicine (26 works) · Psychology (22 works) · Political science (21 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Nursing (17 works) · Public health (15 works) · Environmental health (12 works) · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk (11 works) · HIV/AIDS Research and Interventions (11 works) · Gender Studies (10 works)