About us

What is HIV Prevention England?

HIV Prevention England (HPE) is the national HIV prevention programme for England. It delivers a nationally coordinated programme of HIV prevention work with gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (GBMSM), people of Black African ethnicity and other populations in whom evidence demonstrates higher or emerging burden of HIV prevalence.

The HPE programme conducts its HIV prevention work via four key activity components: campaigns, community interventions, capacity and skills development, and stakeholder engagement.

HPE is a national programme, funded by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, designed to complement locally commissioned prevention in areas of higher prevalence. It is managed by Terrence Higgins Trust.

What are we aiming to achieve?

HPE has been commissioned to deliver five goals. These inform all the work we do:

  1. Increase HIV testing to reduce undiagnosed and late HIV diagnoses.
  2. Improve knowledge and understanding of HIV prevention among populations facing a higher likelihood of contracting HIV in England.
  3. Promote condom use and other evidence-based safer-sex and biomedical HIV prevention interventions.
  4. Raise awareness of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and prevention strategies and the role of STIs in the context of HIV acquisition and transmission.
  5. Reduce levels of HIV related stigma within affected communities and more widely.

Our campaigns

The HPE programme delivers two national campaigns throughout the financial year:

  • National HIV Testing Week
  • Our summer campaign burst.

These two campaigns fall under the umbrella campaign It Starts With Me.

National HIV Testing Week, which takes place in February every year, is a campaign to promote regular testing amongst the most-affected population groups in England. It encourages people from across England to order self-sampling kits for HIV and syphilis or self-test kits for HIV from the national HIV self-sampling service. Key campaign messages include:

  • Testing for HIV is quick, free and confidential.
  • People can live with HIV for a long time without any symptoms and testing is the only way to know your HIV status.
  • If you have HIV, finding out means you can start treatment, stay healthy and avoid passing the virus onto anyone else.
  • There are many ways to test – at a sexual health clinic, your GP or by ordering a test online.
  • Anyone diagnosed in the UK with HIV can access free treatment and support.

The campaign provides a variety of merchandise via our HPE resource portal and conducts a variety of promotional work shared via multi-channels, including outdoor advertising; targeted broadcasts; digital and social media; press and PR; and local health promotion activities and HIV testing delivered by HPE’s local activation partners.

It Starts With Me Summer Campaign takes places between June and September and focuses on raising awareness of why and how to prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV. The campaign uses the tagline ‘get ready for a hot summer’ and is delivered through digital platforms and face-to-face outreach.

The campaign is disseminated in a sex positive way, acknowledging that sex is something to be enjoyed and taking prevention measures will enhance that enjoyment.

The campaign provides a variety of merchandise via our HPE resource portal and conducts a variety of promotional work shared via multi-channels including targeted broadcasts, digital and social media, press and PR, and local health promotion activities and HIV testing delivered by HPE’s local activation partners.

Our social marketing approach

The HPE programme follows a Behavioural Ecological Model which drives behaviour change by action on the individual, local, community and ‘social structural’ level.

Our current social marketing campaigns build on the assets and engagement of our previous programme, while rejuvenating the campaign with a fresh creative approach and with innovative new features based on the latest strategies in commercial media, social marketing and health promotion. The It Starts With Me brand has been refreshed for both GBMSM and Black African communities.

In 2023, National HIV Testing week returned with a new strapline, ‘I Test’. This campaign was developed using a participatory approach, through which we gathered insights from our target audiences and feedback on our previous campaign, ‘Give HIV the Finger’. The ‘I Test’ messaging explores people’s different reasons for testing and allows for flexibility to respond to changing testing technologies and different audience needs.

Local activation

Local activation is delivered in towns and cities across England by HPE Local Activation Partners. This activity supports the It Starts With Me campaign and National HIV Testing Week by providing face-to-face information and advice to encourage uptake of HIV and STI prevention methods within our target audiences, as well as offering point of care HIV testing.

Our local activation partners are:

Sector development

HPE continues to integrate sector development into the structure of the programme to increase knowledge, skills and innovation via webinars, seminars, conferences, e-learning modules and training.

Monitoring and governance

Terrence Higgins Trust works closely with the Office for Health and Disparities to provide robust monitoring data in order to effectively evaluate the programme. Quarterly programme reporting and contract management reviews are held and cover the following:

  1. Local delivery: monitoring of local activation interventions and point of care testing completed through a bespoke dashboard on the HPE website.
  2. Marketing activity: monitoring digital, social media and campaign deliverables and their associated key performance indicators (KPIs).
  3. System leadership and sector development: activity-based monitoring supported by annual evaluation surveys of stakeholders including after National HIV Testing Week and a national conference.