Aids & Mobility (A&M)

www.aidsmobility.org

Partners

Ethno-Medizinisches Zentrum, Germany

European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG) - Brussels, Belgium
Fondet Til Bekaempelse Af Aids - AIDS-Fondet , Denmark
MTU AIDSI Tugekeskus - AISC, Estonia
Terrence Higgins Trust - THT, United Kingdom
National Institute for the promotion of Migrants'health - NIMPH, Italy
YENIDEN Health and Education Society - Yeniden, Turkey

Contact

EATG Secretariat - Ana Lúcia Cardoso

Aids and Mobility – Ramazan Salman

History

The original AIDS & Mobility (A&M) project started in 1992 to provide HIV and AIDS prevention, care and support to migrants and mobile populations across Europe. In the early years, A&M built partnerships and a strong network of professionals and organisations to work together on HIV and migration. The project has built a network of non-government and government agencies and organisations, individual experts and other stakeholders since its inception.
It hosted meetings and developed activities that, for the first time, brought together experts on HIV and migration with migrants themselves. The project began to collect information on and research into the situation of migrants and mobile populations in relation to HIV and AIDS in Europe. A collection of country reports and a range of other materials document the findings. These and further materials are also archived and accessible on the HIV Clearinghouse website of AIDS Action Europe for future reference.
The A&M project 2008-2011 was co-funded by the Executive Agency for Health and Consumers (EAHC) at the European Commission, the State of Lower Saxony, the Hanover Region and City as well as the Portuguese High Commissariat for Health. It differed from its precursors in one major aspect - it included a practical HIV prevention component.
Associated project partners in six European cities worked with migrant communities using capacity building through transcultural mediators to reduce HIV infection risk. Each site convened a group of relevant local stakeholders to serve as a platform for recruiting mediator trainees and for ensuring that local efforts were well integrated into related local activities in the fields of health, social services and migration in general, and HIV and young migrant and mobile populations in particular.
The transcultural mediator approach aims to improve health literacy and HIV awareness by involving migrants themselves in delivering health promotion to their own communities. After participating in training and receiving their transcultural mediator’s certificate, these peer educators initiate, organise and conduct information sessions in their own languages, making their communities aware of HIV prevention and related topics. They are paid a modest compensation for this work.
The six project partners centrally evaluated the training as well as the community information sessions. Separate, overarching work packages on evaluation, networking, capacity building, dissemination and policy development supported the model and continued the work of previous A&M projects.
In the A&M network, partners share knowledge about HIV and migration, build up scientific research and other evidence and contribute to the development of training strategies and materials.