HIV & Health Outreach

Services provided by our Health Outreach Team nurses include HIV/HCV/HBV testing, partner notification, referrals, counselling, medication adherence support, and HIV education for individuals and groups. The team is available to provide service to all Interior Health communities.

Services are confidential, free and non-judgemental. We can come to you or you can come to us. Call a Health Outreach Nurse toll free at 1-866-778-7736, Monday to Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

On demand HIV & syphilis testing is available at all Interior Health labs and at Valley Medical Laboratories in the Okanagan. 

There’s no need to meet with a physician or health care practitioner. Visit your chosen Interior Health lab or Valley Medical Laboratory and request an HIV and/or a syphilis test from the laboratory staff. You will receive a lab requisition form to fill out. Once the form is completed and returned, your blood sample can be drawn. If you plan to visit an Interior Health lab, you can print off the requisition form at home and bring it with you to the lab.

Unfortunately, you cannot use the on demand program to get an HIV and/or a syphilis test without providing your name or Personal Health Number. For HIV testing only, if you wish to get a test without providing your name, contact your family physician, nurse practitioner, or local health outreach nurse at 1-866-778-7736.

Find an Interior Health lab or Valley Medical Lab nearest you.

Point of Care HIV Tests provide an immediate HIV test result and are appropriate in some situations. These tests are available:

• By calling a Health Outreach Nurse toll free 1-866-778-7736
• At Outreach Urban Health in Kelowna
• Through the Street Nursing Program in Kamloops; call 250-434-9898

HIV testing should now be part of every person’s health routine, but the frequency of HIV testing will depend on the type of activities in which people engage. HIV tests should be offered to all people:

• Routinely, every five years, to all people aged 18 to 70
• Routinely, every year, to all people aged 18 to 70 years who belong to populations with a higher prevalence of HIV infection (see guidelines for details)
• Once at age 70 or older if your HIV status is not known

AND for people, including adults 18 to 70, youth and the elderly, whenever:

• A new or worsening medical condition that requires laboratory investigation occurs
• Symptoms of HIV infection or advanced HIV disease are identified by your health care practitioner
• You or your health care practitioner identify a risk for HIV acquisition
• You request an HIV test
• You become pregnant

For the most recent information about HIV testing, please visit the HIV guidelines www.hivguide.ca.

There is no additional follow up for people who test negative – you will not be called or informed of your negative result. If you wish to confirm your negative result, phone 1-866-778-7736 for results two weeks after the test occurs. Please do not call the lab where you had your testing done; they will not have your test results.

If you test positive, you will be contacted by a nurse who will provide support, education, follow up care, and referral to a physician, if you don’t have one.

This toolkit provides practical guidance and tools to assist community based organizations or groups to deliver social and emotional peer support services to people living with HIV and/or hepatitis (Hep C).

It includes four parts:

• Getting Started: a guide to develop and deliver peer support services
• Training Peer Mentors: facilitation guide
• Becoming a Peer Mentor: participant training guide
• Peer Mentor Policy and Procedure Handbook

Please also check out the section on HIV-related stigma, which is currently separate from the rest of the toolkit.

• GetCheckedOnline.com
• MyHealthIsSexy.com
• PEP
• PrEP
• BC HIV Testing Guidelines