We have uploaded our latest researcher profile to our YouTube channel. This time around, we profiled Barry Adam, a Senior Scientist and the Director of Prevention Research at the OHTN. You can find a few excerpts from the interview here. To watch the entire interview, see below.
OHTN: What drew you to HIV research in the first place?
Barry Adam: I was one of the founders of my local AIDS Service Organization. So the AIDS Committee of Windsor was formed in 1985, when there was a wave of ASOs being formed across Canada. And I spent a lot of time working on the ground level in trying to advance the wellbeing of people living with HIV at a time when there were few, if any, treatments.
OHTN: What inspires you to do this work?
Adam: Well, I belong to that generation that was very heavily impacted by HIV in the early days so like many others, I have lost a lot of people to AIDS. And a lot of people very close to me became positive and some have survived and thrived while others didn't make it to the new treatments. So that was certainly a formative experience for me.
OHTN: What's next for you? What are your hopes for the future?
Adam: I am now putting a lot of effort into encouraging and supporting new researchers to take up a lot of these issues. There is a set of graduate students who are very smart and just about to enter into the field. We need to think of ways to give them a place in the world so that they can continue to pursue these issues and not be carried off in other directions just because of the exigencies of what the job market has available for them.