HIV Prevention England

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has published ‘Towards Zero – An action plan towards ending HIV transmission, AIDS and HIV-related deaths in England – 2022 to 2025’.

The Plan will support the Government’s aims to achieve zero new HIV infections, AIDS and HIV related deaths in England by 2030, and the work required to achieve ambitious interim targets by 2025:

• To reduce the number of people first diagnosed in England from 2,860 in 2019, to under 600 in 2025.
• To reduce the number of people diagnosed with AIDS within three months of HIV diagnosis from 219 to under 110.
• To reduce deaths from HIV/AIDS in England from 230 in 2019 to under 115.

The publication included the news of the expansion of opt-out HIV testing in Emergency Departments (A&E) in high prevalence areas, backed by an additional £20 million over the next three years.

The HIV Action Plan looks to build on the successes achieved in England over the past decade, and will continue to strive to increase testing rates in populations most affected by HIV, and raise awareness of combination HIV prevention. The four key objectives of the HIV Action Plan are:

• Objective 1: ensure equitable access and uptake of HIV prevention programmes.
• Objective 2: scale up HIV testing in line with national guidelines.
• Objective 3: optimise rapid access to treatment and retention in car.
• Objective 4: improving quality of life for people living with HIV and addressing stigma.

A national HIV Action Plan Implementation Steering Group, chaired by Professor Kevin Fenton will look to drive forward the aims of the Plan, and will comprise of all key partners, including the voluntary sector. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will update Parliament on the progress of the Plan on an annual basis.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is due to publish a monitoring and evaluation framework in early 2022. The framework will monitor progress towards the 2025 ambition at national, regional and local levels, as well as measuring the extent to which the actions set by the Plan are implemented.
HIV Prevention England will work closely with the Implementation Steering Group, DHSC and our key stakeholders to ensure our programme provides maximum impact in support of the Action Plan’s objectives.

Our annual National HIV Testing Week (NHTW) campaign, which starts Monday 7 February 2022, is a key deliverable of the HIV Action Plan. NHTW will support the National HIV Self-sampling Service to provide test kits across England to those most at risk of HIV.

Read the HIV Action Plan.

Read the DHSC Press Release.

Following a competitive tender process, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) within Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) have commissioned Terrence Higgins Trust to deliver a new National HIV Prevention Programme from 2021 to 2024.

The new programme will run from November 2021 to March 2024 and identify as ‘HIV Prevention England’ to retain continuity of the programme’s work and engagement with key HIV sector stakeholders from the previous 2016-2021 programme.

Programme aims

• Improve knowledge, understanding and uptake of combination HIV prevention interventions among populations most at-risk of HIV in England.
• Raise awareness of STIs and STI prevention strategies.
• Reduce levels of HIV related stigma within affected communities.

What’s new?

Building on previous success and learning, the new HPE programme will be characterised by:

• More expansive and ongoing involvement of multi-sector partners and stakeholders in development, implementation and evaluation at national and local levels.
• Inclusion of prevention of STIs to deliver a holistic approach to sexual health.
• New innovative and cost-efficient interventions expanding on activities of the previous programme.
• Enhanced co-production through creative design and implementation, delivering culturally competent campaigns effectively meeting the needs of key target populations.
• Focusing on equity to ensure equitable outcomes for all at risk of acquiring HIV and STIs.
• Responding to recommendations from the imminent national HIV Action Plan and Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategy.

A briefing with more details on activities and how you can get involved will be circulated shortly.

SAVE THE DATE: National HIV Testing Week 2022

National HIV Testing Week will take place Monday 7 February to Sunday 13 February 2022.

To keep up-to-date with the latest news and subscribe to email updates, sign up using our handy form (found on the right panel or at the bottom of the page).

The current national HIV prevention programme contract ends on Saturday 31 July 2021. The HPE team would like to extend our thanks to all our colleagues across the HIV sector who have supported us between 2016 and 2021, especially our local activation partners.

Please note from Sunday 1 August 2021 the HPE resources portal will be unavailable, and the HPE and It Starts With Me websites and social media channels will remain online but dormant until the new contract is awarded.

A message from Public Health England: New National HIV Prevention Programme tender

Over the past five years, HIV Prevention England has contributed to efforts to reduce HIV transmission by improving awareness of combination HIV prevention and increasing access to HIV testing through a number of different initiatives, ensuring that more people in England are aware of their HIV status. This contribution has supported the UK government’s continued commitment to end new transmissions of HIV in England by 2030.

PHE has now published the tender for the National HIV Prevention Programme 2021-24 via the procurement system Atamis, and with an intended contract start date of Monday 1 November 2021.

The components of the National HIV Prevention Programme 2021-24 are:

• Deliver ‘always on’ health promotion activity in addition to an agreed number of health promotion campaigns and interventions each year, using a range of different types of media including digital and social media.
• Provision of relevant information materials, using simple and appropriate language on a variety of accessible media including print and digital, aimed at the target groups.
• With the endorsement and approval of local authorities, work alongside local HIV prevention activities in order to reinforce work undertaken.
• Provide support to the broader HIV and STI prevention sector (or organisations who work with people most at risk of HIV) in terms of developing local effective practice and knowledge and supporting the development of skills, capacity and leadership.
• Prepare regular briefings and summaries of the learnings as part of a strategic approach to dissemination and sharing of promising practice with the wider HIV prevention community.

We would like to extend our thanks to Terrence Higgins Trust and their partners for delivery of the National HIV Prevention Programme, as ‘HIV Prevention England,’ from 2016-21.

For any queries that cannot be addressed via Atamis, please get in touch with Katie Neate – Programme Manager for HIV Prevention ([email protected])

HPE is proud of our achievements and contribution to England’s HIV prevention efforts during the past five years. Our work has focused on three key areas:

• Social marketing
• Local activation
• Sector engagement and professional development

Social marketing highlights

• Opportunities to see: over 900 million opportunities to see our campaigns.
• Press and PR: coverage in 5k+ press articles.
• Website: 1.2 million visits resulting in 730k uses of website tools that include tools to check when one should test for HIV, choose the right condom or find out if they might benefit from PrEP.
• Campaign recognition: average of 81% for gay and bisexual men (GBM), and 59% for people of Black African ethnicity (BA).
• Motivation to act: 76% GBM and 70% BA said they were motivated to act and take an action as a result of HPE campaigns.
• Took action: 81% GBM and 59% BA reported taking an action as a result of HPE campaigns.
• Self-sampling kits: HPE is responsible for the promotion of PHE’s self-sampling programme. 126,838 kit orders (68% GBM, 7% BA heterosexuals and 24% other population groups). Returned kits had a 0.84% reactivity rate.
• National HIV Testing Week: established national HIV testing as a key calendar event for the HIV response in England.
• Awards:
  • Overall Innovation Award: BMA Patient Information Awards.
  • Best Practice Paper: European Social Marketing Conference.

Local activation

Supporting social marketing activities:

• 31 Local Activation partners
• One-to-one information and advice: 75k people seen (39k GBM and 32K BA).
• Community HIV testing: 16.4K tests (8k GBM and 5.4k BA).

Sector engagement and professional development

• More than 400 organisations got involved in HPE campaigns annually.
• 20 professional development events held, including the HIV Prevention England Conference with more than 900 participants from the HIV sector.
• Stakeholder engagement strategies developed with key stakeholders:
  • GP Engagement Strategy
  • Faith Engagement Strategy.