A new study looks into increasing testing for sexual health infections in pharmacies.
Noah Johnston
Kicker
Getting tested for sexually transmitted infections in Newfoundland and Labrador can be difficult. Patients with a family doctor can request blood work or urine screens. Those without primary care must rely on hospital emergency rooms or walk-in clinics. In St. John’s, a small number of dedicated sexual health clinics offer specialized care, but access across the rest of the province is limited.
The APPROACH study—short for Adaptation of Point-of-Care Testing for Pharmacies to Reduce Risk and Optimize Access to Care in HIV, Hepatitis C, and Syphilis—aims to change that by turning community pharmacies into testing sites.
Led in this province by Dr. Deborah Kelly and funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the study helped pharmacies across Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Alberta administer sexually transmitted infections (STI) screening to nearly 400 people.
“We wanted to know if this was offered through pharmacies, is that something that would be interesting to people?” Kelly said. “Would they take us up on that opportunity? How would it be received?”
Participants overwhelmingly reported that pharmacies felt far more approachable than hospitals or traditional clinics. Kelly noted that pharmacies offer a unique blend of personal care and anonymity. That’s a critical factor for health services that still carry stigma.
“They could have been in there picking up milk because they sell groceries. Or if they were seen coming out of a private counselling room, they could have been getting a flu shot or being counselled on a new medication,” Kelly said. “It wasn’t necessarily obvious that you go to the pharmacy to get an STI test.”
Participating pharmacies offered two main testing methods for HIV, hepatitis C and syphilis:
- Point-of-Care Tests: These use a finger-prick blood sample to deliver results in minutes before the patient leaves. A negative result is nearly 100 per cent accurate. A positive result detects antibodies and signals the need for confirmatory laboratory testing. Built-in safeguards prevent false negatives if an insufficient blood sample is provided.
- Dried Blood Spot Tests: These require a few drops of blood on specialized paper, which is sent to a central laboratory for near 100 per cent diagnostic accuracy.
For advocates like Gerard Yetman, Executive Director of the AIDS Committee of Newfoundland and Labrador, expanding testing access is an urgent matter. He said that positive HIV diagnoses in the province more than doubled between 2024 and 2025.
“Most of the people who tested positive in 2025 were tested because they were already sick, not through routine screening,” Yetman said. “That means they had been living with HIV for a long time, and we have no way to determine how far the virus may have spread undetected.”
While the AIDS Committee mails self-testing kits to residents, Yetman sees pharmacy-based testing as a vital solution for rural regions.
“Everybody has a pharmacy; not everybody has a doctor,” he said.
Kelly and her team plan to publish their findings across three papers, hoping that the evidence they produce might encourage health authorities to make pharmacy-based sexual health testing permanent. The first volume, focusing on pharmacist feedback, has been peer-reviewed and will appear in the Canadian Pharmacists Journal within the next month.
She says that the worst part about the study is that it had to end. She still gets contacted by people looking to take part by getting tested.
“Our results support the need to improve both access and equity to testing,” Kelly said, “not only in this province, but across Canada.”
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