Working together towards a stigma free city
Despite all the advances in clinical care, we know that for people living with HIV life can be difficult because of stigma and discrimination.
HIV stigma is often based on an outdated idea about HIV and compounded by discrimination of other characteristics such as gender, sexuality, race, sex work, drug use, immigration status and more.
We know that in order to get us to the ambitious Fast-Track Cities targets of zero new infections, zero preventable deaths and 100 per cent of people living well, we must combat stigma. Clinical care and the improvements in life expectancy alone are not enough and we need to make sure we do everything we can to eliminate HIV-related stigma in our city.
The London Fast-Track Cities initiative has secured a pot of funding for the next three years to address stigma as part of its work, with an ambition to make London a HIV-friendly city by 2030.
The Fast-Track Cities London Leadership Group set up a stigma working group to look at the current evidence on stigma, review existing work and campaigns aimed at tackling stigma and draft an initial action plan.
Now we are looking to experts by profession and experts by experience to get involved in developing these plans.
We don’t have all the answers but what we do have is the capacity to drive forward and amplify work already happening and bring others on board to try new things.
Read the proposals below and send us your feedback:
Fast-Track Cities London Stigma Proposals for discussion
We will be hosting an engagement event on Friday 31 January 2020 to work on the proposals together, sign up here.
Email hlp.londonftci@nhs.net to find out more.