SCOPE project: Amplifying Community Voices for Prevention (2022-2023) –Newsletter

In February 2022, the European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG) received funding to strengthen community capacities to deliver, as well as to advocate community-led, inclusive and integrated HIV prevention services to address the diverse needs of populations most affected by HIV and yet inadequately served by the traditional health system.

For two fruitful years, SCOPE, as this initiative became known, worked in close collaboration with community representatives including gay and other men having sex with men, transgender and gender-diverse people, migrants, women and people who use drugs to facilitate cross-learning, awareness-raising, networking, community monitoring of the implementation of combination prevention, production/adaptation of targeted information materials and policy advocacy.

 Learning opportunities

Webinars and a workshop

SCOPE organised 3 bilingual (EN, RU) webinars on HIV biomedical prevention research & PrEP implementation issues for community educators and advocates.

Webinar in 2022:

• New antiretroviral (ARV)-based HIV prevention options
• Implementation challenges for novel PrEP modalities
• Lessons learns from Oral PrEP
• Discussion on sex workers’ access to PrEP, access to information and uptake of PrEP in migrant communities and in Central and Eastern Europe

Summary report: click here.

Webinars in 2023: 

• Update from studies on long-acting intramuscular PrEP, DoxyPEP, vaccine and STI-PEP research
• PrEP research and uptake among women and, in particular, migrant women from sub-Saharan Africa and transgender people

Summary report: click here.

In June 2022, SCOPE brought together 25 community workers to discuss HIV prevention services. The workshop highlighted the need to update prevention programming and approaches to address present and evolving population-specific needs, stressed the importance of respecting cultural differences and involving communities in creating solutions for their unique challenges. The workshop focused on the intersectionality in service provision.

Summary report: click here.

Study Trips

Four community health workers and advocates around HIV prevention had the opportunity to visit an organisation of their choice to:

• Learn from peers about innovative, inclusive, and integrated HIV prevention services that can be adapted to their local setting
• Establish and/or strengthen partnerships with a host organisation(s)

From Association Xenon (Georgia) to Gaïa-Paris Association (France), Tedo Bigvava explored Gaïa-Paris Association’s innovative harm reduction services.

From Apoyo Positivo (Spain) to PrEPster (UK), Juan Francisco Cabrera Solano delved into PrEPster’s community outreach strategies.

From Stronger Together (North Macedonia) to GAT (Portugal), Atanas Avramov learned insights from GAT’s effective community-centred HIV strategies.

From NGO Cohort (Ukraine) to New Generation NGO (Armenia), Anastasiia Yeva Domani connected and established with local organisation working for the rights and interests of trans people.

Awareness-raising at local level

SCOPE issued two calls for proposals for the translation or production of community-informed, specific information materials. The selected proposals came from Portugal and Poland.

PrEPafrik campaign (Portugal)

Grupo de Ativistas em Tratamentos (GAT) translated and adapted a PrEP campaign made by the Africa Advocacy Foundation. The #PrEPafrik campaign started in February 2023 is raising awareness about PrEP among African communities in Portugal as a tool to prevent HIV infection. The campaign has been disseminated via African community partners and all health services and organisations supporting migrants in Portugal. The campaign reached 42,171 people. GAT engaged different health and migration stakeholders – from the Directorate-General of Health, the National Program for Sexually Transmitted Infections and HIV Infection, to the High Commission for Migration.

Over 1,500 printed materials were distributed across Portugal. GAT plans to continue sharing these materials both online and in print.

PrEP for Women campaign (Poland)

The Foundation for Social Education (FES) launched a campaign in October 2023, aimed at enhancing awareness of PrEP among women and healthcare professionals.

The initiative featured the development and distribution of educational materials, including two types of leaflets: one providing guidance on ensuring information accuracy and another titled “PrEP for Women,” designed to educate women about PrEP.

Additionally, FES created stickers for healthcare providers and a specialised notebook for doctors prescribing PrEP, offering practical information and promoting the availability of PrEP services.

 3,100 copies of these materials were distributed in anonymous testing sites, medical facilities, and events.

Community monitoring & research

Standards in HIV Combination Prevention: Definition of Standards and Monitoring Tool

EATG worked together with 11 key population networks – ECOM (Eurasian Coalition on Health, Rights, Gender and Sexual Diversity), ESWA (European Sex Workers Rights Alliance), EuroNPUD (European Network of People who Use Drugs), ILGA Europe, ReShape/IHP/Chemsex Forum, SWAN (Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network), TAMPEP (European Network for the Promotion of Rights and Health among Migrant Sex Workers), TGEU (Transgender Europe) and the SCOPE Community Expert Group to identify a working definition of “HIV combination prevention”. The group then developed a checklist for population-specific standards in HIV prevention service delivery that evaluates the political and legal context, service range, referral systems, and service quality.

10 community-based organisations based in Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Slovakia, Spain, Romania and Tajikistan piloted the checklist. The checklist provided a tool for monitoring and reflection about HIV combination prevention services and identifying areas for improvement for each of the organisations.

EATG is planning to update the checklist according to the feedback received from country partners and to work with them to implement the tool at larger scale.

TrANs and non-biNAry Sex Workers Self Care Study

Since 2023, as part of the SCOPE peer community research, Erofili Kokkali from Positive Voice (Greece) has been developing a study on TrANs and non-biNAry Sex Workers Self Care in Greece. The research, developed in close collaboration with Coalition PLUS, aims to highlight the importance of experience and perceived discrimination as a vulnerability factor in sexual and reproductive health for transgender and non-binary sex workers. The research will provide data to design targeted programmes and interventions.

Community Advocacy

In November 2022, EATG – SCOPE partnered with the European Parliament’s Intergroup on LGBTI Rights,UNAIDS, AIDS Action Europe, Aidsfonds, and the European Public Health Alliance to host a policy dialogue on expanding equitable access to oral PrEP within the EU and its partner countries.

The policy dialogue addressed PrEP access challenges, emphasising its role in achieving the 2030 AIDS targets and the need for equitable health solutions. Stakeholders discussed how to improve PrEP accessibility, highlighting the importance of collaborative efforts for effective HIV prevention. See summary report: here.

At EACS 2023, EATG organised a special session on harm reduction and mental health.

• Ann Piercy, EATG member and Miłosz Parczewski, EACS Board, hosted a session addressing mental health needs and interventions to improve health outcomes of populations facing intersecting stigma and discrimination
• Jorge Garrido, Apoyo Positivo, provided insights on chemsex and the needs of users
• Amanita Calderon-Cifuentes, Transgender Europe, highlighted the importance of gender transformative HIV services, centred around gender affirming care and recognition of transgender identities
• Marios Atzemis, Positive Voice, reported on the findings of SEMID-EU project – Services for Vulnerable Migrants Who Use Drugs in the EU

Stakeholders meeting on “Community Perspectives on Guidelines and Programming Recommendations for Better Inclusion of Inadequately Served Groups”

Prior to the EACS Conference, in Warsaw in October 2023, EATG brought together partners to discuss community recommendations emerging from the SCOPE project on making services inclusive and intersectional to improve access to combination prevention in the WHO Europe Region. The meeting was an opportunity to share project findings since 2022. The participants discussed next steps for the SCOPE project in expanding community representation in the public debate, in generating data and tools for community research and advocacy. See summary report: here.

EATG published a video with overviews from some of the participants.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank everyone who helped make the SCOPE project and all its activities a reality!

SCOPE Community Expert Group Members: Magdalena Ankiersztejn-Bartczak, Marios Atzemis, Andrii Chernyshev, Hirwa Carter Honorée Wolf, Jules James, Ann Piercy. 

SCOPE Consultants: Irina Bondas, Rosemary Delabre, Volodymyr Izotov, Erofili Kokkali, Olga Nikolaienko, Hanna Oliinyk, Daniela Rojas Castro, Daniel Simões, Anna Tokar.

SCOPE Partner Organisations: Adhara, asociación VIH/Sida, Afrikaherz, ARAS – Romanian Association Against-AIDS, Arcigay, Association of HIV affected women and their families “Demetra”, Association SKUC, AVAC, Coalition PLUS, CSO Equal Opportunities, Doctors of the World – Greece, Drug Policy Network, South East Europe Eurasian Coalition on Health, Rights, Gender and Sexual Diversity (ECOM), European Network for the Promotion of Rights and Health among Migrant Sex Workers (TAMPEP), European Network of People who Use Drugs (EuroNPUD), European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA), Foundation for Social Education (FES), Gaïa-Paris Association, Grupo de Ativistas em Tratamentos (GAT), ILGA-Europe, Institute of Tropical Medicine, ISKORAK, Mainline, New Generation Humanitarian NGO, NGO Cohort, Partnerships in Health, Plateforme Prévention Sida, PrEPster, ReShape/IHP/Chemsex forum, Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN), Stronger Together, The Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM), Transgender Europe (TGEU).

The SCOPE project has been developed by the EATG, and was made possible through a grant from ViiV Healthcare Europe Ltd. EATG acknowledges that ViiV Healthcare Europe Ltd has not had any control or input into the structure or content of the initiative.