Abstract
Background: In the post-pandemic context, public health authorities have noted not only a higher incidence rate of STIs in Montreal, but also later diagnostics, which can lead to more advanced forms of disease and greater transmission. In this context, local public health program managers approached our research team to better understand the needs and local resources in sexual health services in their area.
Approach : The environmental scan (ES) is the first phase of an action-research project involving citizen-users, community workers and healthcare professionals, executives and managers. We conducted an environmental scan (ES) between November 2024 and April 2025 in a Montreal neighborhood. The aim of the ES was to document sexual health needs and services among vulnerable populations (migrants, LGBTQIA2S+, youth, injection and inhalation drug users, incarcerated persons, sex workers, people experiencing homelessness) to inform decision-making in the planification and implementation of sexual health services (Charlton et al., 2021). The SE included: 1) a review of sexual health initiatives and services in Quebec, Canada and other countries; and 2) 20 qualitative interviews with stakeholders (healthcare professionals, executives, managers and community workers) and potential service users.
Results : In this paper, we will share the preliminary results of the ES, and more specifically the needs and the initiatives that we have identified in our analysis. We will also discuss the favorable conditions and challenges we encountered in producing an ES in the context of an action-research collaborative project involving intersectoral partners (researchers, healthcare professionals, executives, managers and community workers), conducted in post pandemic context and at the same time as the Quebec governmental healthcare and social services reform. Briefly, we will explain the framework based on complex adaptive system approach for understanding the results from this ES.
Implications:
1) We will conduct focus groups with stakeholders to identify realistic and adapted solutions to the needs identified in the ES.
2) These solutions will be proposed by levels of action (ex: community. operational, management and executives), and by level of interdependency between these different levels of action (based on coevolution concept).