Wangari Tharao, right, with her colleague Marvelous Muchenje, speaking at Premier Dalton McGuinty’s visit to Women’s Health in Women’s Hands.


A Bridge Over Troubled Water


WITH EXPERIENCE IN RESEARCH, SERVICE DELIVERY AND POLICY, WANGARI THARAO UNITES NETWORKS OF HIV SERVICE PROVIDERS.


“The reason I’m able to do what I do is because I bridge different worlds,” Wangari Tharao says. With experience in service delivery, policy and research, Tharao acts as a conduit for members of the HIV/AIDS com- munity. But it’s taken years of commitment to build that bridge. “For me, involvement with HIV has been a journey,” she says. After completing her Masters’ degree, Tharao started volunteering with a HIV/AIDS organization and visiting a hospitalized East African woman who was dying of AIDS. From their conversations,


Tharao gained insight of the challenges experienced by women living with HIV. “The extreme stigma experience within health care settings was huge,’” she says. “Women were living in poverty and were


struggling with huge amounts of stigma and discrimination—not just from the institu- tions, but from their own communities,” she says. “I realized that to be able to provide effective care, you need to look at HIV within the context of women’s lives.” That realization was enough to turn Tharao’s vol- unteerism into a career and within a couple


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of months, she began working with an AIDS service organization. Since then, she has worked in HIV


prevention, as an educational coordinator, health promoter and community based researcher. Today, Tharao works as the Program and Research Manager for Women’s Health in Women’s Hands (WHIWH), a health centre that provides primary health care to immigrant and refugee women living in African, Caribbean, South Asian and Latin American communities in Toronto and sur- rounding areas. WHIWH also participates in research and advocacy that informs service delivery and public policy. WHIWH’s service users includes women living with HIV, the majority of whom are black. For these service users, Tharao’s research has highlighted the obstacles faced by refugees and immigrants living with HIV: varying abilities to navigate the health care system, resettlement process challenges and the need for training and development. “All these issues are interrelated and you have to deal with them to help people respond to HIV,” she says.


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