HIV Prevention England

What are we aiming to achieve?

HPE has established goals with the Government. These will inform all the work which we do:

• To increase HIV testing to reduce undiagnosed and late diagnosed HIV in both communities
• To support sustained condom use, and other behaviours which prevent HIV infection in both communities

In addition, HPE will work to tackle stigma through its messaging, to increase the evidence base for effective HIV prevention and develop social marketing interventions using new information technologies.

How are we planning to do this?

HPE has five parts:

High Impact Supercampaigns will be developed, one for each community, which will run for the entire period of the Programme until 2015. These will be focused on increasing testing, supporting sustained condom use and other HIV prevention behaviours. They will use a range of media suited to the campaign theme and drawn from print, radio, outdoor and online. These will be developed by us with the involvement of the communities who will benefit from them.

Online/Digital HIV Prevention Services will be developed, enabling more people to get information and support online. These will include expanded prevention information and advice, interactive tools to help people understand more about the risks they take and what they can do about them, and interactive services to help people reduce risk taking. These will be progressively developed over the lifetime of the contract by us and will be available via ourwebsite.

Local Delivery Services will be delivered in towns and cities across England. These services will be linked to the Supercampaigns, and will provide face to face support to help people reduce their risk taking, as well as increasing access to community HIV testing. BHA4E will coordinate these services for African communities and MBARC and Yorkshire MESMAC for gay men across the South and West of England, and across the North and Midlands respectively. Community organisations in the predecessor CHAPS & NAHIP programmes will be given the opportunity to contribute as 'local delivery providers'.

Development & Engagement Work will be undertaken as a central part of the HPE programme. There will be policy and practice development work as well as briefings and support for local authority commissioners, HIV prevention service providers and policy makers. This will also include media work to ensure coverage for HIV prevention in England. This work will be undertaken by MBARC, NAM Publications and Terrence Higgins Trust.

Monitoring & Evaluation will be built in throughout HPE's work. Each intervention will have clear, measurable output targets and a set of short, medium and long term outcomes will be agreed with the Health Protection Agency. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine will coordinate the monitoring & evaluation work of HIV Prevention England.

How will we use our resources?

The Government has committed the equivalent of £2.45m per year to HIV Prevention England. It is planned to spend about 35% of this on Supercampaign delivery & online services, 35% on local services, 15% on development & engagement work, and the remaining 15% on monitoring & evaluation. In addition, we have identified a further 10% of 'in kind' support from charitable sources which will be used to support the programme and ensure that every pound spent goes as far as possible.

HPE recognises that the resources committed to the programme will, in themselves, be insufficient to achieve everything which is needed. The large majority of HIV prevention expenditure will still take place outside of the HPE Programme. That is why HPE will be working from the outset with Public Health England to ensure HPE work is targeted for maximum impact; with clinician groups so that HIV & sexual health clinicians and NHS clinical services are involved, and finally with local authority commissioners so that the national work can be aligned with the local HIV prevention work which should be funded by local authorities from April 2013.

What are our plans?

Since the HPE contract was awarded by the Government in summer 2012 it has maintained the HIV prevention work previously funded by the national CHAPS & NAHIP programmes, to ensure continuity of work.

The first campaign to be delivered by HPE will launch in the middle of October 2012 and will be focused on encouraging more Africans and gay men to test for HIV. This campaign will use media and online approaches as well as local face to face services, and work with funders and policy makers. This will be followed at the start of 2013 by the launch of the first phase of both Supercampaigns.

How can the sector and the communities get involved?

Throughout the lifetime of the Programme, people will have the opportunity to get involved in campaign development and evaluation work, and through making their views heard through our website.

However, in addition there will be three structured opportunities for the sector to be involved. These are:

African community forum - this will provide a mechanism for those community organisations delivering local work with Africans to contribute to the development of HPE and to have their voice heard.

MSM community forum - this will provide a mechanism for those community organisations delivering local work with MSM to contribute to the development of HPE and to have their voice heard.

Evaluation advisory group - this will bring together a small team of experts drawn from public health, clinical and research fields to provide support and additional HIV prevention intelligence to HPE.

There will also be opportunities for faith groups, LGBT and African community groups and businesses to get involved through the Development & Engagement workstream, with all of us contributing to reducing HIV in our communities.