Objectives:
To improve the reach, impact, efficiency and effectiveness of community-led HIV education
- Established HIV community-led efforts have been highly successful in achieving HIV prevention, testing and treatment results across a range of populations and localities, and have prevented a generalised epidemic;
- Those strengths notwithstanding, Australia faces a number of challenges: , the dominant narrative in
Australia regarding HIV is out of date. This directly affects our capacity to address HIV as it conceals the urgency with which governments need to make new prevention strategies and testing methods accessible, causes people at risk of HIV to discount the possibility of their risk and therefore inquire about the tools available to prevent HIV, contributes to stigma and discrimination, and contributes to misinformed responses to HIV by community and health professionals; and , current efforts are not at sufficient scale to reach those at risk of acquiring HIV. This includes making new prevention strategies accessible, increasing testing frequency among key populations and supporting immediate linkage to care for people newly diagnosed with HIV and retention in care and treatment adherence among those already living with HIV.
- The majority of community-led HIV borganisations are small in size with a small education team. In general, they are staffed by individuals who are specialists in working with one population or delivering one aspect of community-led work (such as delivering educational workshops) but may lack expertise in designing integrated programs, or in specific modalities (such as the effective use of online tools for behaviour change). As each organisation endeavours to meet the needs of local populations, there is a risk of duplication and inconsistency in messaging, rather than collaboration;
- Together, these factors will limit our capacity bto reach our goal of ending HIV transmission in Australia.