Tamara Barnett is a primary care nurse and Hepatitis C Program Coordinator at Cool Aid Community Health Centre in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She leads a nurse-led hepatitis C program that has treated more than 1,000 people and developed innovative approaches to testing and treatment across community, housing, shelter and correctional settings.
Tamara has been involved with INHSU since 2016–17 and is a long-standing member of the INHSU Nurses Committee. In this interview, she speaks with INHSU board member Matt Bonn about the evolution of nurse-led hepatitis C care, the value of bringing different perspectives together, and how the connections and ideas she encountered through INHSU helped shape her own path from clinical nursing to research.
Matt Bonn:
Tell us about your role, what it is you do, and the work you do within INHSU.
Tamara Barnett:
I’m a registered nurse with certified practice, a primary care nurse and the Hepatitis C Program Coordinator of our nurse-led hepatitis C program at Cool Aid Community Health Centre in Victoria, British Columbia.
Cool Aid provides accessible, integrated healthcare to people who are often underserved by the traditional healthcare system, with particular expertise in sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections, substance use, mental health and harm reduction.
Our nurse-led hepatitis C program has treated more than 1,000 people with direct-acting antivirals, building on a program that began in the interferon era. Our work extends beyond the clinic through community-based outreach, including peer testing and support to access treatment. We’ve also developed hepatitis C micro-elimination programs in a local correctional facility, shelters and supportive housing.
I see my role as providing hepatitis C testing, treatment and care in the simplest and most accessible way possible, making sure that care is flexible and meeting people where they are. I really want to see hepatitis C eliminated on Vancouver Island. Ideally, I work myself out of a job!
I recently completed a Master of Science in Nursing at York University, supervised by Dr Mia Biondi, who is also involved with INHSU. Our research included hepatitis C self-testing and self-collection in carceral settings, hepatitis C treatment during pregnancy and HIV prevention. I’m now pursuing a PhD.
I’ve been involved with the INHSU Nurses Committee since its early days. The committee helps ensure nursing and frontline clinical perspectives are represented across the wider INHSU network. Over the years, we’ve developed a dedicated nursing stream at the conference while also making sure nurses are represented throughout the broader program.
More recently, we introduced the Nurses Breakfast, which gives nurses from around the world an informal opportunity to meet, share experiences and learn about the different ways people are delivering care. Last year’s breakfast in Cape Town was really special, so I would definitely encourage nurses coming to INHSU to get out of bed early and join us!
Matt Bonn:
What is your favourite thing about INHSU?
Tamara Barnett:
I first became involved with INHSU around 2016 or 2017. My first oral presentation was in 2018 with my colleague Karen Lundgren, when we presented our nurse-led hepatitis C treatment program and our work micro-eliminating hepatitis C across 13 supportive housing sites.
At the time, nurse-led hepatitis C programs were pretty much unheard of. I wasn’t familiar with terms we commonly use now, like decentralised care, task shifting and task sharing, but that was exactly what we were doing. I actually learnt those terms at INHSU.
Our approach won an INHSU award for best model of care in 2018, and the funding allowed us to expand our work into local shelters, where we went on to eliminate hepatitis C. Since then, we’ve been involved in INHSU infographics, intervention toolkits and symposia, and in 2023 we had Conner Ashleigh come to Victoria to film a Connecting with Care video about our program.
What I really love about INHSU is its focus on practical things that you can take home and use in your clinical practice to directly benefit the people you work with.
I also love that you can have policymakers sitting next to people with lived and living experience, frontline clinicians, researchers, the World Health Organization and people from the United Nations. We all have different perspectives, but we can learn from each other. INHSU creates a welcoming and inclusive environment where everyone’s voice is valued.
That exchange of ideas can also have a ripple effect that we don’t always get to see. At the EMCR pre-conference day in Cape Town, I learnt about zines and took the zine they created home with me. I later showed it to a nursing colleague who was studying public health and social policy. It inspired her to explore the history of zines in her thesis and plan to present her own thesis in a zine format.
I think that’s what’s so special about INHSU. You learn something, take it home, share it with colleagues and friends, and it can inspire something completely new.
INHSU has also had a significant influence on my own career. When I first started attending conferences, I didn’t have much experience in these settings. Through INHSU, I had opportunities to learn from nurse clinicians and scientists, people with lived and living experience and researchers from around the world.
Seeing nurse researchers and scientists leading clinical practice, research and knowledge generation showed me what was possible within nursing and the impact nurses can have beyond the clinical setting. That inspired me to return to graduate school and complete my Master of Science in Nursing, and has subsequently led me to pursue a PhD.
Matt Bonn:
If you could hang out with any cartoon character for a day, who would you choose and why?
Tamara Barnett:
I’d probably say Ariel from The Little Mermaid. It was my favourite movie growing up, and I’m from Vancouver Island, so I live on an island surrounded by the ocean.
When I was little, I thought there were little mermaids living in the ocean around the island. I was a big fan of The Little Mermaid and forced my younger brother to watch the movie probably 100 times. I think it would be pretty fun to hang out with Ariel for the day!