Mikiki, gay men’s health activist, street outreach worker and Newfoundland's own video artist, performance artist and drag queen, will be visiting St. John’s for a Memorial University-sponsored talk about gay men’s sexual health at Eastern Edge Gallery on May 6. His interactive public forum, Strategic Positioning, covers HIV stigma, HIV prevention and new landmark studies linking community-wide treatment to community-wide prevention.

As it happens, the Canadian Association for HIV Research Conference (CAHR 2014) taking place this week in St. John's will bring more than 600 delegates to the city, including Mikiki, to discuss new research in HIV-AIDS prevention, so the timing could not be better.

“This public forum right after the conference will be a great way to carry some of the conference discussions back into the community,” said Mikiki. “I want to get people talking frankly about condomless sex, also a sexual technique called strategic positioning, and I think we also need to look at changing messages around HIV prevention, especially a recent number of studies linking HIV treatment to HIV prevention.”

Mikiki’s experiences as a sexuality educator in Calgary's public schools, a bathhouse attendant in Saskatoon, and a drag queen karaoke hostess in St. John's have all informed his work in gay men's health. He has worked as a gay men's sexual health outreach worker in Ottawa, an HIV educator in Montreal, the poz prevention co-ordinator at the Toronto People with AIDS Foundation and he now runs a street outreach team for a community health-centre and conducts HIV rapid testing.

“But coming to St. John’s still feels like coming home,” he said. “I’m looking forward to the conference, and to spending some time with friends here.”

The ResearchTalks event is sponsored by the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Applied Health Research, its Research Exchange Group on Gender, Sexuality and Health, Make it Better N.L. and ACNL (AIDS Committee of Newfoundland and Labrador) , supported with Quick Start Funding from Memorial University’s Office of Public Engagement.

The event takes place on Tuesday, May 6, from 7-9 p.m., Eastern Edge Gallery, 72 Harbour Dr. For more information, vist http://www.nlcahr.mun.ca/Research_Exchange/ResearchTalks.php or contact Rochelle Baker, rochelle.baker@med.mun.ca.