While many things have changed over these past months, our commitment to your health and safety remains the same. To learn more about our COVID-19 response and changes to your participant experience, we encourage you to visit our COVID-19 Wellness Plan.
Hassle Free Clinic and Toronto Public Health’s Crossways Clinic are providing limited HIV/STI sexual health services virtually and in-person by appointment only. Please check their websites for more information.
Organizations that work with gay, bi, and queer men in Toronto have shared their resources about how to access services and supports, and ways to take care of your well-being:
Please email us at toronto@engage-men.ca or call us at 416-979-5000 ext. 552158 if you have any questions or concerns.
If you are coming to the office and do not have an appointment,
please phone or email us to make sure that staff will be available that day.
Engage is a voluntary sexual health research study with gay, bi, and queer men, including trans and 2-spirit men and other men who have sex with men, of all HIV statuses. The study is happening in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, with guys aged 16+. Engage is a cohort study, which means that several hundred guys are recruited into the study and then those same guys regularly participate in the study every 6 months for up to 4 years so that we can look at trends in behaviours and experiences overtime.
If you have completed an Engage study visit already, you may be eligible to complete a follow-up study visit. Contact toronto@engage-men.ca to book your next follow-up study visit. You can also call us at 416-979-5000 ext. 552158 (please follow the operator’s instructions).
Participation begins with a study visit. The visit will take approximately 2-3 hours to complete, and consists of the following:
Those participants who have given us permission to contact them about other study opportunities will be invited to return for follow-up study visits (1 and 2 years later and then every six months after that for another 3 years). These study visits will be similar to the first study visit but only require completion of a computer survey and STI testing.
Participants are given a $50 cash honorarium for each full study visit. They also have the option of putting some or all of their honorarium money towards draw tickets ($10 each) to enter one or both of the draws that we will be doing on a regular basis for a $250 Best Buy gift card and a $2000 travel voucher.
Recruitment for the study began in May 2017. Data collection is expected to proceed until the end of 2023.
The Engage Toronto site is led by the following people:
A number of individuals are involved in the execution of day-to-day Engage activities, including working with participants and entering participants’ clinical data into databases for analysis. These individuals include research support staff (Abbie Parlette, Samer Lazkani, Anna Yeung, Alexandre Schnubb), volunteer research assistants, study nurses (A. Cappa, Evan Campbell, Christopher Draenos), and post-doctoral fellows (Dr. Syed Noor, Dr. Mark Gaspar, Dr. Shayna Skakoon-Sparling).
Click here to learn more about the Engage team. You can also visit hivprevlab.ca to learn more about the Ryerson University HIV Prevention Lab.
If you have a personal relationship with any of our team members and do not feel comfortable participating in Engage as a result, you do not have to consent to participation. Please use our contact information below to let us know if you have any concerns about working with any of our team members.
Our staff represent a wide range of backgrounds in terms of gender and sexuality, among other aspects of identity. You may work with several different staff members during your study visit, and they are all competent in LGBTQ-affirmative care. In the same way that they are expected to treat you with respect, we ask that you also show them respect during your study visit.
In Toronto, the Engage study is funded by the following organizations:
For more information, check out the other pages on our website and/or visit our Facebook page at facebook.com/EngageToronto. You can also contact us directly:
*Office Hours:
Monday – OFFICE CLOSED
Tuesday – 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
Wednesday – 3:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Thursday – 12:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Friday – 12:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Saturday – 10:00 am to 4:00 pm
Sunday – OFFICE CLOSED
If you are coming to the office and do not have an appointment,
please phone or email us to make sure that staff will be available that day.
105 Bond St., Rm. SBB208 (2nd floor) Toronto, ON M5B 1Y3 
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Office Hours:
Mon: Closed Tue: 3-9 pm Wed: 3-9 pm Thu:3-9 pm Fri: 3-9 pm Sat: 10-4 pm Sun: Closed
Telephone: 416-979-5000 ext. 2158
Email: toronto@engage-men.ca
