HPE

It Starts With Me summer campaign 2021: Ready for a hot summer?

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The next phase of the It Starts With Me campaign will focus on raising awareness of good sexual health and wellbeing as England continues to emerge out of lockdown. The campaign will launch on Monday 17 May 2021 and will continue until the end of June, with minimal social media promotion starting Thursday 6 May 2021.

People are keen to return to the things they find pleasure in: socialising, going out and, of course, enjoying sex. The digitally based campaign will remind people how to have sex safely, how they can protect themselves and their sexual partners from HIV, STIs and unplanned pregnancy, and to encourage them to think about the sex they want to enjoy this summer.

Read and download the Summer 2021 Campaign Briefing [PDF].

Check out our social media pack for summer 2021

National HIV Testing Week 2021 recap

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We’re proud that National HIV Testing Week (NHTW) 2021 was an outstanding success despite being a very different event to the one we are all used to.

This NHTW our partners across the sector continued to show passion and enthusiasm as they engaged their local populations, albeit virtually and largely through social media channels this year.

Our campaign highlights include:

  • NHTW’s most successful day ever with a record-breaking 8,200 HIV test kits requested on Monday 1 February. Popularity for HIV test kits was so high during this year’s event that Public Health England (PHE) funded an additional 10,000 kits, enabling even more people to know their HIV status.
  • Our NHTW messaging was amplified across mainstream and social media, and the major broadcasters by Channel 4 drama It’s A Sin which has continued to influence conversations about HIV as the series comes to a close on Friday.
  • More than 60 MPs testing for HIV at home, showing how easy it is to test, and engaging in important discussions based on the HIV Commission’s recommendations regarding the normalisation and increased access to testing.
  • Celebrities and influencers including Dr Ranj, Great British Bake Off star and podcaster Michael Chakraverty, Nigerian sexologist Amos Sanasi, influential trans writer Juno Dawson, and many, many more promoting the campaign through social channels via takeover events and video messages on the importance of HIV testing.

We know thanks to the success of this year’s campaign many of our stakeholders are interested to know the impact of testing kit uptake in their local area. PHE will be undertaking a review of the data over the next couple of months once most of the tests have been returned.

National HIV Testing Week evaluation results

Thank you to everyone who responded to our NHTW evaluation survey.

We received 71 responses, with more than 80% of respondents working in HIV or sexual health community organisations (41%), Sexual health clinics (32%) and Local Authorities (10%). Approximately one third of responses came from London (17%) and the South East (17%), and 14% from the North West region.

Headline results

NHTW continues to receive high levels of support from key stakeholders working in HIV prevention:

  • 94% of respondents will support NHTW in future
  • 97% agree NHTW is a valuable addition to their HIV prevention efforts

COVID-19

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was the biggest theme to emerge from the survey. There was a clear consensus that the campaign had managed to maintain its effectiveness despite the challenges of being a virtual event and without physical testing being able to take place this year.

It is felt there is need for a strong NHTW campaign in future, when conditions allow for the support of physical outreach and health promotion. There was a clear call for commissioners to support local HIV prevention efforts and show an interest in their work “so that more people in the community can be reached and get tested, leaving no one behind”.

Unsurprisingly the results of the survey show the clear differences between the virtual 2021 campaign and NHTW 2019:

  • 82% used the social media pack (NHTW 2019: 67%)
  • 58% ordered physical resources (NHTW 2019: 82%)
  • 32% delivered more tests than usual (NHTW 2019: 54%)

NHTW 2021 still had an impact on target communities

Despite the changes of circumstance to the delivery of this year’s campaign, stakeholders still reported high levels of perceived impact in their local communities:

  • 92% increased awareness of HIV testing amongst clients and the local community (equal to NHTW 2019)
  • 78% agree NHTW has increased their organisations capacity to impact their community/clients (NHTW 2019: 83%)
  • 32% raised the profile and support of HIV testing by engaging high-level public individuals (NHTW 2019: 26%)
  • Reactive HIV tests

We asked organisations who provide HIV testing if they had any reactive tests during the campaign.

  • Ten reactive tests were reported during NHTW 2021, more than NHTW 2019 (6).

Furthermore, all but one tests in 2019 were reported by community organisations, during NHTW 2021 the clear impact of the lack of physical HIV testing meant that all reactive tests were found in sexual health services (SHS). The increase in availability of online (or self-testing/self-sampling) via SHS appears to have also played a role in this change.

Thank you to everyone who took part in the evaluation survey and supported the 2021 campaign.

How community-led testing can help us end HIV transmission

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This European Testing Week, National AIDS Trust reflects on the vital role of community-led testing in helping us to end HIV transmission.

In August, National AIDS Trust launched two new resources to support community HIV testing in England:

  • Community HIV testing: Intervention design toolkit
  • Community HIV testing: Evaluation toolkit.

Community HIV testing is vital to the effort to end HIV transmissions in England. Led by community organisations and delivered outside of traditional healthcare settings that may not be accessed by all, community testing can reach a different audience to clinical services [PDF].

Its success in doing so has led it to be recommended in both national [PDF] and international HIV testing guidelines.

As with all HIV testing, community testing aims to reduce the number of people with undiagnosed and late diagnosed HIV. But it also has a much wider set of functions. By being community-led, it helps to break down barriers to talking about HIV, thus normalising HIV testing, reducing stigma, and empowering people to manage their own sexual health.

Community testing provides a gateway to accessing prevention, treatment and care, as well as other services relevant to people’s needs, and can play an important role in linking people into the wider health system.

Impact of COVID-19

Now may seem an odd time to be talking about HIV and community-based testing. COVID-19 has limited the ability of face-to-face services to be delivered, and many community organisations have had to shut their doors and move online. Summer saw some resumption of services, but the current lockdown and ever-changing restrictions have limited capacity and hindered long-term planning. Clinical sexual health services are also operating at a reduced capacity.

Yet we know people didn’t stop having sex with the arrival of COVID-19 and that sexual activity increased with the easing of lockdown [PDF]. Back in June we wrote that the need for judgement-free safe, discreet and accessible services is as high as ever. This will only become truer again as restrictions lift.

Ensuring that varied options for safe and effective HIV testing remain accessible is therefore vital to prevent COVID-19 from undermining progress in ending HIV transmissions. The end of COVID-19 may seem in sight, but we cannot become complacent.

The role of community testing during the pandemic

As COVID-19 transformed the ways healthcare can be delivered, services adapted at speed. Sexual health clinics now conduct much more of their engagement virtually, and there has been an increase in the use of postal testing.

Some community organisations are assisting their clients to conduct these tests remotely. HIV Prevention England (HPE) has produced an excellent Framework for delivering Community-Based HIV and Sexual Health Services during COVID-19 [PDF], which includes guidance on providing services in this way.

While the shift to virtual sexual health services has been necessary, and for many people effective, it’s important to acknowledge the limitations. Not everyone has access to virtual services, and some who do may feel uncomfortable if they lack privacy at home. Fears of judgement or recrimination for breaking COVID-19 restrictions can also deter people from getting tested.

There aren’t easy solutions to these barriers, and the safety of staff and clients is paramount. However, it’s safe to say community testing providers, already working in communities and experienced in involving those not accessing testing elsewhere, have a role to play and are well placed to manage risks carefully.

This was evident at the community testing event we delivered with HPE back in August. There we heard about some of the important outreach and testing that community organisations such as Yorkshire MESMAC had recommenced, with risk management and infection control processes in place to ensure safety.

For a recording of this event, please contact [email protected].

Adapting services to COVID-19 and beyond

National AIDS Trust’s toolkits support the design and evaluation of community testing interventions based on knowing what you are trying to achieve – i.e. your objectives – and who it’s for. The basic principles and stages set out in the toolkits still apply during the pandemic, but providers may have to take additional consideration when making some decisions based on context.

Even with vaccines for COVID-19 on the horizon, there remains a great deal of uncertainty and we still expect to be grappling with varied and changing restrictions across the country in the immediate future.

There are ways to adapt. Through the summer, some organisations made the decision to move client recruitment online (including developing online booking systems which have potential beyond COVID-19). Others reconsidered the locations used for testing and recruitment, with ability to social distance a key factor. Spaces which run the risk of getting crowded or that have poor ventilation should be avoided, and organisations should consider how the closure of venues might impact on where they can operate.

Appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) and training on management of infection risk must also be in place to protect staff and volunteers. HPE’s framework is an invaluable resource to use alongside the toolkits to advise on the specific safety measures related to COVID-19.

Community HIV testing is about ensuring everyone who needs an HIV test can get one. It is the most marginalised who find it the hardest to access scaled-back services during COVID-19, and we must make sure that no one’s left behind. Agile community-led testing is critical if we are to do so.

National AIDS Trust’s Community HIV testing toolkits were supported by funding from Public Health England’s HIV Prevention Innovation Fund.