Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what specific policies or initiatives have been implemented to encourage ethnic minority women to test for HIV beyond maternity care.

As part of the Public Health England (PHE) commissioned national HIV Prevention programme, a national social marketing campaign took place through National HIV Testing Week to raise awareness of the importance of HIV testing and opportunities to test in different settings. The campaign has specifically tailored its message to ethnic minority women at a higher risk for HIV acquisition. In addition, all women from black African backgrounds can access the national HIV self-sampling service. PHE is funding all requests for HIV self-sampling kits made through the national service until 8 January 2017.

The national HIV prevention programme is focused on at-risk populations including black Africans and other black and minority ethnic groups with a high or increasing burden of infection. In addition, in the first nine months of operation (November 2015 to September 2016) of the national HIV self-sampling service 35,347 kits were delivered of which 18,270 were returned. Of the returned kits, 19% (3,447) were returned by individuals who self-ascribed as being from black and minority ethnic communities. Of the returned kits, 56 gave a reactive result (1.6%), which was above the service average of 1.1%.

The HIV Innovation Fund is supporting a number of projects which focus on ethnic minority communities including tackling stigma and promoting testing.