Oscar Javier Pico-Espinosa

Working with: Dr. Darrell Tan

I am a postdoctoral fellow at the PrEP Implementation Project (PRIMP), a study about the implementation of Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention in Ontario and British Columbia.

I am a medical doctor and epidemiologist. I worked in program evaluation projects and community medicine in Colombia before moving to Sweden for my MSPH and PhD in epidemiology.

I am passionate about community health and this is a fantastic platform for meaningful and exciting research in public health, epidemiology and implementation science.

I analyzed data from a pragmatic randomized controlled trial for chronic pain. Specifically, I estimated the effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness of non-pharmacological therapies for chronic neck pain and described the trajectories of pain among the participants.

I took a “break” from research to work as a junior physician in primary care before starting my postdoc.

My work consists of quantitative data analysis of existing data from the PRIMP project and coordination of the ongoing data collection. The PRIMP project is evaluating the uptake of PrEP in five Canadian cities. It collects information from providers and users and has a strong community based research component.

The risk of getting HIV among men who have sex with men is more than 20 times greater than the general population. PrEP is a relatively new intervention for HIV prevention. However, there are many barriers to access PrEP at the individual, societal and policy level. The PRIMP project aims to understand those issues better.

More engagement of community members in research, from the planning to the dissemination stage.

Dr. Oscar Javier Pico-Espinosa