Publications

Clinicians and researchers invited to speak at the Canadian Nutrition Society's 2023 thematic conference turned their attention to inequities in eating disorder care. This overview gathers the topics they covered, spanning advances and remaining gaps in the assessment and treatment of disordered eating and eating disorders. Speakers stressed how systemic factors, including racism, weight stigma, and COVID-19, shape who gets identified and how they are treated, and proposed strategies for addressing those inequities. The paper translates the discussion into actionable recommendations for clinicians, with attention to professional development, cultural competence, and more equitable assessment and treatment practices overall.

Insecure work and poor mental health can trap people in a loop. Drawing on narratives from 20 precariously employed cisgender and transgender sexual minority men in Toronto, this study applies a political economy framework to a gap in labour market and occupational health research on sexual and gender minority workers. Findings are presented across time, covering employment readiness, looking for work, and life on the job, revealing the social and structural processes behind participants' accounts. Mental ill-health pushed men out of the labour market, deepening precarity that worsened their health again. Responses must address stigma, stable work, care, and welfare.

Emotional intimacy shapes how satisfying a relationship feels, and queer and feminist scholarship ties it closely to how sexual minority men build partnerships. This Photovoice study used individual photo-based interviews with 16 sexual minority men to describe both their experiences of emotional intimacy and the strategies they use to cultivate it. Three interwoven themes emerged: embracing vulnerability to drive self-acceptance, described through embodied courage and autonomy; building relationality with partners through empathy, trust and reciprocity; and securing connections with family, friends and community, where acceptance and belonging supported intimacy. The findings can guide tailored programming that helps sexual minority men build intimate relationships.

Kinship among Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex people frequently looks different from the nuclear family that housing policy assumes, and that mismatch narrows housing options. This policy case study examines systemic factors across federal, provincial and municipal levels in Canada, zeroing in on two measures: the Multigenerational Home Renovation Tax Credit and Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods. Using Toronto as its setting, the analysis considers how these policies fit, or fail to fit, the household needs of 2SLGBTQI+ adults whose living arrangements reflect queer kinship. The authors identify openings for change toward shared housing that supports chosen families.

Researchers examined whether starting PrEP leads to more bacterial sexually transmitted infections among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men in Ontario. Data came from iCruise, an online longitudinal study following 535 participants who completed 12 weekly diaries between July 2017 and April 2018. Marginal structural models accounted for factors that change over time, and a bias analysis tested how misreported infections might skew results. About 13 percent of participants took PrEP during follow-up. PrEP use was linked to higher gonorrhea incidence, but not to chlamydia, syphilis, or bacterial STIs overall. The authors back pairing routine gonorrhea screening with PrEP services.