Innovative HIV prevention projects awarded £600,000
Public Health England (PHE) awards £600,000 to support 13 innovative voluntary-led HIV prevention projects across England.
The National HIV Prevention Innovation Fund is awarded to projects that offer new and innovative ways of delivering HIV prevention, in an effort to turn around the ever increasing numbers of new HIV diagnoses. The successful projects all target groups at high risk and are supported by their local authority. PHE will provide a total of almost £600,000 between the 13 successful projects, selected from 102 applications.
In addition to Black African communities and gay and bisexual men, the winning projects for 2016 to 2017 will bring new interventions into isolated rural communities, as well as targeting deaf people, trans people and men involved in chemsex. The winners were announced today by the Public Health and Innovations Minister, Nicola Blackwood, at an HIV and AIDS All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) event at Westminster.
The winning projects are:
- SignHealth - Wandsworth
- NAZ - Waltham Forest
- Terrence Higgins Trust - Hackney, in partnership with London Friend
- Yorkshire MESMAC - Wakefield
- OutREACH Cumbria - Cumbria
- Addaction - St Helens and Liverpool
- Lifeline Project - Stoke-on-Trent
- Positive Action - Hampshire, Southampton
- KwaAfrica - Wandsworth
- cliniQ – Westminster
- National Prison Radio
- Martin Fisher Foundation - Brighton and Hove
- Catholics for AIDS Prevention and Support - Hertfordshire and London
There are an estimated 103,700 people living with HIV in the UK, with around a fifth (18,100) undiagnosed and unaware they have the virus and at risk of unknowingly passing the virus onto their sexual partners.
New diagnoses of HIV remain high among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men with around 3,000 new cases every year. Getting diagnosed early is essential in helping to reduce transmission, as once diagnosed people will usually start treatment with anti-retroviral drugs, which are highly effective in reducing the virus to undetectable levels. This means people on treatment can be considered non-infectious.
HIV testing also reduces late diagnoses, which carries a tenfold risk of death within a year compared to those diagnosed promptly.
Professor Kevin Fenton, National Director of Health and Wellbeing at PHE said:
“While HIV rates are declining in the general population, we are still seeing HIV impact far too hard on certain communities. That’s why I’m very excited to see twice the number of projects winning funding this year with some excellent bold new creative approaches to help boost local action to reduce HIV among high-risk groups.”