Simon Rayek ’23, External Communication Manager, ViiV Healthcare Canada, has long focused on community-based research and health promotion around health outcomes for 2SLGBTQIA+ people, in particular HIV and AIDS.
Simon Rayek has long focused on community-based research and health promotion around health outcomes for 2SLGBTQIA+ people, in particular HIV and AIDS.
Rayek says his Master of Health Administration at UBC’s School of Population and Public Health helped him turn research into action.
During his time at the Health Initiative For Men, a Vancouver-based non-profit that aims to strengthen the health and well-being in communities of self-identified gay, bisexual, and queer men and gender-diverse people in British Columbia, he sought ways to connect research findings and evidence to decision-makers and the health-care system at large.
“It was important for me to understand how we fit into the bigger system in order to really understand how to advocate for funding, how to present interventions in ways that align with ministry priorities, and the ways that they were interested in spending resources,” he says.
He says the MHA not only teaches students the inner workings of healthcare systems but also how to make changes within them.
Rayek went on to positions with the Ontario HIV Network and is now at ViiV Healthcare Canada, a pharmaceutical company 100% dedicated to HIV medicines and research. In these roles, Rayek uses what he learned in the MHA program to communicate concepts around HIV care and prevention. This requires sensitivity and precision, balancing the need to raise awareness around the virus – particularly advancements in treatment and prevention – without increasing stigma.
Rayek says his studies with the MHA helped him find that delicate balance. Put simply, the MHA taught him how to “show up at work in a way that makes it possible to do the things that you want to do.”
“It’s that understanding of the different ways in which we could pull on levers – policy levers or governmental levers or health authority levers – to help advance whatever health outcomes we were interested in advancing with HIV,” he says.