New briefing on Trans People and HIV Testing

HIV testing is crucial for identifying those who are undiagnosed so that they can receive life-saving treatment early and stop the transmission of HIV.

Promoting testing among trans people is particularly important because they have a higher prevalence of HIV, and general health services may not meet their needs appropriately.

This year, HIV Prevention England put a spotlight on increasing testing among trans people as part of the National HIV Testing Week campaign. In early November, we hosted a webinar on Promoting trans inclusive HIV testing and sexual health services [PDF] in partnership with CliniQ, ClinicT, The LGBT Foundation and Yorkshire MESMAC.

Following on from that, we have produced a short information briefing highlighting the reasons why HIV testing is so important for trans people, addressing barriers to HIV testing, and including helpful tips, tools and resources on providing a trans-friendly health service.

Trans People and HIV Testing [PDF]

Promote your National HIV Testing Week events by registering them online

Are you holding any National HIV Testing Week activities? Would you like these to be promoted to people in your local area?

Working in collaboration with NAM, we’re offering to promote your National HIV Testing Week events through our website and social media.

How it works

Simply complete this brief form on the NAM website, providing your organisation and event details.

NAM form for registering NHTW events

Your event will be registered with NAM and then be promoted to thousands of people on the It Starts With Me website as well as on our social media channels.

NHTW event search results example page

When individuals search for services in their area, your National HIV Testing Week event will show up in the results.

Register your event now

GMI Partnership launches National HIV Testing Week in London with large-scale rapid workplace HIV testing

On Tuesday 14 November The GMI Partnership, a consortium of three charities, (Positive East, METRO and Spectra) will be launching National HIV Testing Week with a large-scale rapid workplace HIV testing initiative.

Tideway is a huge construction project, located near Vauxhall, upgrading London’s infrastructure with approximately 1,000 people on site. Tideway is getting involved with National HIV Testing Week by providing workplace HIV testing alongside the GMI Partnership.

The GMI Partnership will be providing a range of services on the day, including:

  • Confidential rapid HIV testing.
  • Information and resources on sexual health and services available across London (as well as free STI screens if requested).
  • Linking people with sexual health clinics for those who want extra support.
  • Referrals to clinics for those testing reactive or needing emergency post exposure prophylaxis (PEP) treatment.
  • Information about how to access pre exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), including the PrEP Impact trial.
  • Free condoms and lubricant.
  • Referrals into counselling services for those worried about the risks they are taking with their sexual health.
  • Promoting the HIV support services we provide across the GMI Partnership partner agencies.

The GMI Partnership is committed to reducing the onward transmission of HIV, and stopping the stigma that can surround testing.

For more information on this and other National HIV Testing Week events by The GMI Partnership visit their website.

Free HIV postal test kits are now available across England to eligible individuals

testing kit

Since 2015, Public Health England (PHE) and a number of participating local authorities have funded a national HIV postal testing scheme for people from communities which experience a higher prevalence of HIV. These include gay and bisexual men, black Africans, and individuals who have a partner from a high prevalence country.

In support of National HIV Testing Week 2017, PHE have expanded availability of free HIV postal test kits to all areas of England. The additional tests will be available to order from now until Thursday 4 January 2018. Last year, more than 20,000 tests were ordered during a similar period and it is anticipated that even more will be distributed this year.

HIV postal test kits, or home sampling kits as they are also known, allow individuals to take a sample themselves at home by taking a finger-prick blood test. Unlike home testing kits, where the individual receives an immediate result, this postal test is then sent to a local laboratory for HIV testing and specialist management.

If a person has a reactive test result, they are contacted within five working days and given support options and information on where to get specialist services. Those with a negative result are contacted and informed within three days, or they can log in online using their unique personal code to check their results.

The national postal testing scheme complements existing HIV testing services. A postal test is highly accurate just four weeks after infection, and individuals who get a reactive result can get help in arranging a follow up clinical appointment. The scheme offers individual a viable alternative to testing in-person, and also provides the system major cost savings.

Postal HIV tests can be ordered from www.test.hiv.

Social media pack for National HIV Testing Week

We have created a social media pack to help you promote National HIV testing Week on your social media channels.

What’s in the pack?

  • Images – a selection of images for use on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any another social network.
  • Logos – National HIV Testing Week logos.
  • Links – links to useful HIV testing information, tools and the self-sampling service.
  • Videos – infographic videos explaining the various ways one can get tested.
  • Suggested posts – examples of posts for Facebook and tweets for Twitter.

Download pack (excluding videos) (36Mb)
Download video 1 | video 2

Before you download the pack, here are some things to remember:

Theme

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.

We’re asking people to raise their finger and share a message of 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.

Home sampling HIV testing kits

The national home sampling HIV testing service will be available across all of England from Monday 6 November 2017 to the beginning of January 2018.  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.

As such, we have created some tools to 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 the It Starts With Me website. 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.

Download pack (excluding videos) (36Mb)
Download video 1 | video 2

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