The Women and HIV Research Program was created to address clinical management issues in the care of HIV+ women. Both Dr. Loutfy and Dr. Maggi are active HIV clinicians as well as researchers.

Dr. Loutfy is a clinician at the Maple Leaf Medical Clinic (MLMC), the largest clinical practice serving HIV-positive patients in Canada. She also serves as MLMC research director. MLMC will be an important site for study recruitment and will play the coordinating role in many of the individual studies associated with the Women and HIV Research Program. The program will also build partnerships with other sites eventually enrolling research participants from sites across Canada.

Dr. Julie Maggi is a psychiatrist in the multidisciplinary team at the Positive Care Clinic of St. Michael's Hospital. In this role, she provides psychiatric care to both women and men who have HIV, and who are dealing with issues such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and cognitive deficits. She now also joins the clinical team in the Mental Health and Medicine Program at Women's College. She hopes to increase research and clinical collaboration between the two hospitals.

The participation of Drs. Loutfy and Maggi in a variety of HIV clinician networks offers many opportunities for clinician input and for the identification and implementation of research based on pragmatic, clinical concerns. One of the goals of the Women and HIV Research Program is closer linkages between research and primary care.