LGBT community’s best behind-the-scenes publicist
As the former co-chair of Vision Vancouver, Paul Nixey helped elect Canada’s most LGBT–friendly mayor, Gregor Robertson. Nixey has also advised Canada’s most LGBT–friendly Liberal MP, Hedy Fry, as she’s advanced many measures to bring about greater equality, regardless of a person’s sexual orientation. But what many people don’t know is that Nixey also quietly promotes important health initiatives benefiting the LGBT community by contacting media outlets to keep these issues in the public eye.
This includes expanded access to pre-exposure prophylaxis and post-exposure prophylaxis (known as PrEP and PEP), which reduce transmission of HIV. He also tried to amplify the voices of young folks at YouthCO to have their views heard on sex education. Vancouver is a world leader in measures to make a city a welcoming, healthy, and safe place for LGBT people, whether in the schools, at park-board facilities, or in various medical centres. Nixey is one of the reasons why.
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This article first appeared in The Georgia Straight newspaper’s Best of the City edition.
