Views

Jacqui Stevenson, Senior Policy, Research and Influencing Manager, reflects on prioritising people's quality of life in HIV policy.

Digital transformation holds real potential for strengthening the UK’s HIV response but only if the right safeguards, investment, and co-production with communities are put in place.

In this important month for the community, in a year that has seen increasing challenges and rollback of LGBT+ rights in the UK and around the world, we asked some colleagues, supporters and allies what Pride means to them in 2025. 

Dr Alexander Margetts writes that although not everyone who’s living with HIV needs mental health support, services must be improved for those that need them.

Today is World Mental Health Day and this year’s theme - 'Mental Health in an Unequal World’ - is a fitting one. Like HIV, poor mental health can affect us all. Yet we know that its impact on different groups is not equal, instead reflecting wider social, economic and health inequalities.

Rebecca Mbewe shares that as a black migrant woman from Africa, I would like to delve a little deeper into the conversations around sexual health and perhaps what this means to black women like me living in the UK, this Black History Month.

Dr Tristan Barber writes that when patients are asked if they’ve ever had an HIV test many respond their GP did blood tests and they’re sure HIV must’ve been checked then. Most often they are incorrect.

People living with HIV that are held in immigration detention in the UK are entitled to the same level of healthcare and patient rights as those in wider society. Unfortunately, we know this does not always happen in practice.

Kat Smithson on how forty years after the first cases of HIV-related illnesses and deaths, knowledge and understanding of HIV among the public is often patchy and confused and significant levels of stigma and discrimination remain.

Last year we welcomed the publication of the first report of Dame Carole Black’s independent review of drugs. Part two of the review, looking at prevention, treatment and recovery, was published last week.

As we approach a time when over half the UK population living with HIV will be over 50, the provision of care that responds to the needs of older people living with HIV will become an increasingly pressing issue.

Charity Nyirenda writes that migrants living with HIV must be involved in research and initiatives to understand and improve HIV health outcomes among people born abroad.