Surveys

The healthcare sector undertakes all kinds of surveys to canvass public opinion and inform policies. We feel that it's vital that you, the people who use the services, have your say in shaping them in the future.

That's why Terrence Higgins Trust is involved in partnerships with other organisations to gather this kind of information.

50Plus

50Plus is a research project which is being shared between Terrence Higgins Trust, Age Concern (England) and Help the Aged. It’s funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and its purpose is to explore and document the needs and concerns of people over 50 living with HIV in the UK in order to improve services. Currently, we know we could be doing more and better for people over 50 with HIV, whether someone is newly diagnosed or has been living with the virus for decades.

Currently there are more people over 50 with HIV than ever before and numbers are rising rapidly. We know that people will be needing support in various ways, but we want to ensure that service changes and developments are based on the genuine needs of people over 50 with HIV, not on someone well-meaning’s best guess. So we’re asking as many people as we can find what they need.

The research survey is being managed by Michael Bell Associates, who have a good track record of research for people with HIV, LGBT people and people seeking asylum. The report they produce for us will be overseen by an Advisory Committee including people with HIV, the agencies involved, research professionals and clinical staff.

What’s different about living with HIV as you get older? It might be different health problems. It might be the worry of retiring without anything other than a basic state pension. It might be not having friends or family to help look after you, because of HIV. Or it might be “how will my local support group for older people cope with people with HIV?”. Whatever your issues and interests, we want to hear about them. And if you know other people with HIV over 50, we’d love to hear from them too.

What will be done with the research? It will all be anonymised and individual identities will be confidential, but we will be producing a report which we will share with everyone who wants it, showing our findings and recommendations fir future service development.

Apart from the questionnaire, we have also commissioned a literature review of other existing research from the UK and elsewhere which will be made available, and we’ll be reporting on how services are provided for older people with HIV in the US, which is a few years ahead of us with this issue.

We’ll also be producing a simple guide for people over 50 with HIV to services and entitlements.

We've been running the survey for some time now and we'd like to thank everyone for their input. We're finding that women and African people are underepresented in the data so we're going to continue the survey just for those groups.

If you’d like to take part, and you're African or female, just click here.

Tell your friends.

Call us on 020 7812 1630 if you want any posters, flyers or paper copies of the survey. Growing older with HIV is about more than not dying just yet. Help us make it better than that for everyone.