Dear Colleague,
It’s finally summer! And that means festivals.
On April 29th we paraded and then shared a stall at Swansea Pride with Public Health Wales (PHW), Singleton Clinic, and Terrence Higgins Trust (THT). We handed out over a thousand copies of our 21st Century HIV: What Are The Facts leaflets to attendees and chatted to people about our work while they picked up free condoms and other goodies from PHW. It was lovely to have First Minister Mark Drakeford and Hannah Blythyn MS visit the stall and meet volunteers. We were also present at Colwyn Bay Pride with leaflets in both English and Welsh.
We will be doing several Prides in the coming months including Pride Cymru in Cardiff, North Wales Pride and Pride in the Port, giving out leaflets and chatting to people, and volunteers are always welcome to join us. If you’d like us at your Pride or another festival, would like to help us on the day, or just want some leaflets, contact advocacy@hiv.wales
The HIV Action Plan has finally been launched by Welsh Government. Fast Track and our allies are on an Oversight Group and several subgroups to ensure the actions of the Plan happen. The plan includes three years of core funding for the work of Fast Track Cymru, a budget for Wales HIV Testing Week (which will now be managed by PHW, giving it greater reach and authority), a national data system for the first time, the highly successful postal testing service, and a peer support network.
A number of the 30 Actions contained in the Plan will require the involvement of local Health Boards, GPs, and local authorities. If you would like to discuss the implications of these and how Fast Track Cymru or one of our partners can help you in this, please email advocacy@hiv.wales and we’ll set up a chat.
In March we attended the HIV Stigma March & Rally in London. There was a great turnout and it was a wonderful event to meet like-minded people, break down preconceptions and spread the message about the realities of modern HIV. Check out our Instagram @cardiff_ftc and Twitter to watch the video of our experience. Stigma is now the greatest barrier to beating HIV and we will be paying attention to it in Wales in the coming year.
We were also privileged recently to meet with the UN Special Rapporteur on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity alongside the Gender Clinic, Stonewall and Pride Cymru to speak with them about the issues of stigma and growing levels of hate crimes against some of the communities most vulnerable to HIV. His preliminary report leaves no doubt about the problems facing us in the UK although he had praise for the Wales Government in its work to combat these.
Our Texting 4 Testing project working with GPs in Cardiff & Vale to increase testing through texts to their adult patients is now finished and the Evaluation Report is now available on our website – it’s quite long but full of useful information. Thank you to Zsanett Lukacz for her work on the project and we wish her every success in her future endeavours. Thanks also to Dr Darren Cousins, Dr David Gillespie and Lisa Power for managing the project. Interest in the project continues and we have been invited to present on it at several conferences.
Our Advocacy Network project reached its first anniversary at the end of April. It has been great to meet and talk with our advocate community in our monthly meetings and at events. Congratulations to Richard Churcher, one of our Cardiff network volunteers who has now been asked to join the Cardiff & Vale Steering Group.
Over the coming year, we are looking to broaden our network in terms of both geography and backgrounds – if you’re interested in getting more involved, we’d love to hear from you! In 2023 we are focusing on providing training opportunities for people on how to be better advocates and how to talk to your communities about HIV – if this is something you’d be interested in, please do get in touch.
Coming up next:
Once the funding for the HIV Action Plan is made available we hope to be able to recruit to a number of part-time development worker posts– keep an eye out on our social media for these jobs, working alongside our Advocacy Officer and Pride Cymru staff across Wales.
We are looking forward to a Parliamentary visit from Westminster members of the All Party Group (APPG) on HIV/AIDS to Cardiff in June. They will meet with Fast Track and with Cardiff Royal Infirmary staff to discuss advances in Wales that others might benefit from.
We will be attending the Fast-Track Cities Global conference in Amsterdam in September this year and are looking forward to presenting our work and being inspired by other FTCs across the world. We will also be attending the British Association of Sexual Health & HIV conference in Llandudno shortly.
We are currently seeking people interested in helping the well-established Fast Track Cardiff & Vale and our emerging Fast Track Cities in North Wales, Swansea, and Newport. If you would be interested in working with any of these, or in starting another, please let us know and we will pass you on.
Best wishes,
The FTC&V Team
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