HIV Awareness
HIV Awareness Training
We offer a range of bespoke HIV awareness training to meet the needs of participants and people living with HIV (PLHIV).
Working Towards a
Generation Free from HIV
Reinventing Success is working to advance HIV prevention efforts in the migrants of BAMER communities that are highly affected by the HIV epidemic. This is done through training, information sharing, collaboration and partnerships between community and faith leaders, health care and social services in Greater Manchester.
Faith and community leaders are highly trusted by BAMER immigrants. As such, they can play a pivotal role in delivering HIV prevention interventions to these communities. We facilitated their understanding of HIV and development of action plans that indicate needs of their communities. Specific tasks will be identified in order to address gaps in delivering HIV prevention in each community.
More details of our 2017/18 project can be found here.
Background to HIV projects
An estimated 101,200 people are living with HIV in the UK. Of those, 31% are women, which is nearly 30,000 women. Similar too many other parts of the world, HIV-related stigma and discrimination prevent many people in the UK from accessing the services they need and to live a good quality of life beyond viral suppression (Avert 2017). HIV related stigma is linked with poorer mental health outcomes, including emotional distress, reduced self-esteem and is one of the strongest hindrances to effectively responding to HIV, as the health care providers' attitudes towards people living with HIV may influence the actual services offered.
Further studies have shown that PLWIV have reported violations of their privacy and confidentiality, involuntary disclosure of HIV status, being given last appointments when attending dental care, negative attitudes and humiliating practices by healthcare workers. As result, PLHIV lack confidence in healthcare staff outside specialist HIV clinics and this leads to worry about the treatment and care they will receive now and in their later life and also means that in turn HIV can remain untreated (Jackie Stevenson 2017; The Kings Fund 2017). The three main causes of HIV-related stigma in health facilities include: lack of awareness among health workers of what stigma looks like and why it is detrimental; fear of casual contact as a result of having incomplete knowledge about HIV transmission; and the association of HIV with improper or immoral behavior.
HIV awareness training for community and faith leaders delivered successfully by Reinventing Success in July 2017.
Images show participants attending the first all-day training event.
