National HIV Testing Week starts this Saturday 17 November, and there is still time to get involved.

Your last minute to-do list

Help make this year’s event as successful as possible and make sure to:

• Promote your testing events during National HIV Testing Week on the It Starts With Me ‘where to test’ online tool and NAM’s e-atlas by completing this form.
• Amplify the reasons for and benefits of testing. Download our social media pack which contains suggested posts and tweets, links and images for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
• Share or download our campaign videos on social media and your organisation’s website. Use our subtitled versions on your screens in clinics and surgeries.

Thank you to everyone supporting this year’s campaign and good luck to everyone hosting testing events next week.

Please email [email protected] if you require more information and support.

National HIV self-sampling service

In support of National HIV Testing Week 2018, Public Health England (PHE) have once again expanded availability of free HIV postal test kits to all areas of England.

The scheme is funded to support people from communities which experience a higher prevalence of HIV. These include gay and bisexual men, black African men and women, and individuals who have a partner from a high prevalence country.

The additional tests are available to order from now until Monday 7 January 2019.

This year’s National HIV Testing Week is fast approaching (Saturday 17 November) and it’s time to start shouting about it on social.

We’ve created a social media pack to make it easy for you to get involved and promote local activities, as well as the opportunity to order a free postal test through It Starts With Me.

What’s in the pack?

• Images – a selection of correctly sized images for use on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any another social network.
• Suggested posts – examples of posts for Facebook and Instagram plus tweets for Twitter.
• Links – the suggested posts for Facebook and Twitter also contain links to the It Starts With Me online testing tools and the self-sampling postal test service.

Access the pack via Dropbox

Key messages

This year’s theme is Give HIV The Finger, which aims to demonstrate that getting tested for HIV is as easy as a quick finger-prick test.

Our key messages for this year’s campaign are:

• Testing is necessary to diagnose HIV and prevent onward transmission.
• Testing is easy and accessible in the UK.
• People can rest assured that, if diagnosed with HIV, they can access free treatment and support.

Hashtag

This year’s hashtag is #HIVTestWeek. Hashtags are not case sensitive so using #hivtestweek would work as well – we’ve just used capitals to make it easier to read what the hashtag is about.

Self-sampling postal HIV testing kits

The national home sampling HIV testing service will be available across all of England from Monday 5 November 2018 to the beginning of January 2019. If you can, please use the bit.ly links we’ve provided in the pack when posting to social media, as they contains tracking that will help us understand if the posts lead to people ordering self-sampling kits.

Useful web tools to promote

National HIV Testing Week is an opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of HIV testing, as well as increasing opportunities to test – be it in clinical settings, in primary care, through community-based rapid testing or via postal testing.

Our tools help individuals make decisions on how they would like to get tested, find out when they need to get tested and where to get tested. These tool can be found on It Starts With Me. You can include links to these tools in some of your social media posts where appropriate. The site works well on both desktop and mobiles making it very easy to use the tools.

• ‘Where to test’ tool: This helps people to find out where to get a free HIV test near them by searching by either postcode or a place name.
• ‘When to test’ tool: People are invited to answer a few questions about themselves and their sexual activities and they get a recommendation on when they should get an HIV test.
• ‘Which test’ tool: This tool helps people to find out a testing option that might be suitable for them. It helps people understand that there are different options on how one can get tested.

Access the pack via Dropbox

Ahead of National HIV Testing Week 2018, we are taking a look back at some of the activities our partners have delivered during previous events. Last year LASS and Trade Sexual Health, who both provide services in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, raised the profile of HIV testing by inviting local MPs to their centres.

They explain their engagement with the politicians and why raising the profile of HIV testing is important to their work.

‘To launch National HIV Testing Week 2017, we invited local politicians, Liz Kendall MP and Jon Ashworth MP, to visit our centres as part of a national drive to ensure that HIV remains on the political agenda, as well as having the opportunity to share the successes of our services.

‘Jon Ashworth MP visited Trade Sexual Health to learn about the important work we do in providing free, confidential health advice, information and support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) communities, including HIV testing. His visit was broadcast on Facebook Live to promote testing activities for the campaign.

‘Liz Kendall MP came to see us at LASS and recorded her visit and HIV test for YouTube (see below) to highlight the importance of HIV testing. During the visit she explained she was “delighted to be a part of and support the campaign”.

‘At LASS we acknowledge that ensuring political will is key to sustaining the HIV response both at local and national level. National HIV Testing Week provides us with an excellent opportunity not only to engage our MPs but to get them into the building to see our services in action.

‘At Trade, we also believe that raising the profile of testing services locally and nationally is imperative in our HIV prevention work – National HIV Testing Week is one of the best vehicles we have to do this within and beyond our target audiences.’

Find out more about the work of our Local Activation Partners:

• LASS
• Trade Sexual Health

Free resources to promote HIV testing this National HIV Testing Week are now available to order.

This year’s resources include:

• posters
• leaflets
• condom packs
• stickers
• display stands
• a limited number of T-shirts.

Take part in the campaign

Our 2018 campaign slogan is ‘Give HIV the finger: a finger-prick test is all it takes’, a continuation of last year’s successful creative.

National HIV Testing Week starts on Saturday 17 November 2018 and aims to promote regular testing among the most affected population groups and to reduce the number of people who are diagnosed late or remain undiagnosed.

Last year, 43% of people were diagnosed late. The only means to address this issue is to increase awareness of the importance of HIV testing.

Order your resources now

Register your local testing event

Ensure your National HIV Testing Week activities are a success by adding them to the It Starts With Me website where users of the ‘Where to test’ tool can easily find your event. Submit your event on the NAM website:

Register your testing event today