Testing and prevention

Terrence Higgins Trust led the delivery of the national prevention programme for England from 2016 to 2021. It consists of national campaigns, sector development and coordinating a network of partner organisations to deliver HIV prevention and testing activities for key populations, including a focus on people from Black African backgrounds.

The programme promoted the government’s HIV postal test kits each year. Approximately 8,880 people of Black African ethnicity ordered test kits from 2016 to 2021.

Using interactive digital tools on the It Starts With Me website, more than 15,000 people from Black communities completed self-assessment tools that helped them make decisions on HIV prevention, testing and condom use.

The programme also supported 25 organisations across England to provide HIV community testing and raise awareness of HIV to communities of people of Black African ethnicity. Through this, 32,030 people received HIV and sexual health information and 5,490 tested for HIV. Of those who tested, 44% were first-time testers.

We're commissioned to deliver HIV and sexual health programmes locally across England, providing information, advice, community-based testing and other initiatives in different settings.

We provide testing for sexually transmitted infections through a range of programmes and initiatives, including the National Chlamydia Screening Programme and Buckinghamshire's integrated sexual health service. In addition to the tests provided through the National Chlamydia Screening programme, since January 2019 our regional services have tested more than 6,500 individuals across the UK. Approximately 10% of those who tested were people of Black or Black mixed ethnicities.

Following successful pilots in 2016 and 2017, our HIV self testing service has been running nationwide since May 2018.

With funding from Public Health England, we ran a project trialling Click and Collect as a delivery option to see if this could reduce barriers to accessing testing. We found that this feature particularly appealed to Black African men, who were twice as likely to choose it compared to other users. As a result, we continue to offer Click and Collect as an important element of the service.

In Oxford, we're working with the organisation African Families in the UK to design and disseminate health promotion videos in different languages. These videos aim to increase the uptake of HIV testing among Black African and Caribbean women, as well as fighting HIV-related stigma. We are committed to ensuring this project is developed collaboratively with meaningful participation, recognising that women from the African diaspora are the experts in their own lives.

Through focus groups and one-to-one discussions we have gained insight into some of the barriers women face in accessing HIV and sexual health services, which we aim to address in the videos. However, beyond identifying barriers, we have also seen so much engagement, passion, and a commitment to helping others, which has been truly inspiring. We are confident that this project is only the beginning and we are excited to see where it leads in the future.

Share pot was a local project run by us in Teesside, which aimed to bring women from Black and other minority ethnic communities together with food as a way of breaking down barriers.

The rationale was that we would share our table with others, sharing food and stories as we were preparing and cooking. We could talk about different aspects of women’s health and invite other services along to events to talk about particular aspects of women’s health needs in a really informal and non-threatening way.

So, as we shared the food and recipes, we also shared information about HIV and sexual health. We encouraged the women taking part to engage with services for testing and screening to improve sexual and reproductive health in the community.

The project was backed by Public Health Middlesbrough and we ran sessions at the Live Well Centre. Although the reach was limited, we did have some success as some of the women went on to attend appointments for cervical screens, sexual health screens, breast screening, health heart checks smoking cessation services and contraception services.