Terms of reference: Written Evidence

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The HIV Commission is putting together a national call for written evidence.

Through this call, the HIV Commission will gather evidence to inform a set of recommendations to end new HIV transmissions and HIV-attributed deaths in England by 2030. The commission aims to publish its recommendations by Spring 2020. 

The HIV Commission is aiming to further explore the key themes described below in detail. The commission welcomes your views on these themes and /or additional topics you consider of importance. 

Please note themes are not listed in any particular order.  

Theme 1: Understanding trends, trajectories and opportunities to end the HIV epidemic

  • Incidence trends: What are the current trends in HIV incidence? What are the principal factors driving these trends? What is the likely outcome over the coming three to five years by exposure group?
  • Exposure groups: Who is at risk for HIV acquisition in England today? including intersectionality (those in two or more exposure groups)
  • Elimination: What do we mean by ‘elimination’, what milestones could be set, and how might progress be measured?
  • Late HIV diagnoses and deaths: What causes it and what can be done about it?
  • Economic impact: What are the health and wider societal costs of HIV infection 
  • Partner notification
  • Travel associated HIV: What is its contribution to the UK epidemic? What can be done?

Theme 2: Combination Prevention: what works in preventing HIV. 

  • Combination HIV Prevention: including education, councelling, harm reduction and other approaches
  • Tasp: Treatment as prevention and U = U
  • PrEP: What does the future hold and what is its potential impact?
  • HIV testing: The cornerstone of HIV prevention efforts
  • Barrier methods: Condom use and others
  • New prevention technologies: What are they and how do we plan for their introduction? 

Theme 3: Optimising HIV care services for the future

  • HIV care services: What does excellent look like? How do we improve outcomes by reducing variation between services?
  • Managing complex needs: Improving care coordination of individuals with more complex needs
  • Models of commissioning: What are the models of commissioning? what is working? what are the challenges and opportunities to improve?
  • Workforce: Building a workforce for the future (including building up skills for pharmacists and other groups).
  • Sustainability: How do we sustain funding to enable the implementation of new strategies and technologies and ensure capacity is retained as HIV incidence declines?

Theme 4: Opportunities for addressing the wider determinants of HIV transmission 

  • Politics and leadership: The importance of political leadership in the HIV response
  • Policy responses: What is the current HIV policy landscape and how can it be strengthened?
  • Partnerships: The role of partnerships in strengthening the HIV response
  • Public engagement: The role of campaigns and social marketing in HIV responses

Theme 5: Community-specific considerations and approaches

  • Women: Women and HIV
  • Gay and bisexual men: What are the issues in the fifth decade of the epidemic
  • BAME communities: Developing culturally competent networks 
  • Youth: Young people and HIV
  • Trans and non-binary: HIV and Trans communities
  • People who inject drugs
The written submission should be as brief and informative as possible. The submission should be provided via www.hivcommission.org.uk. Neither printed nor mailed submissions will be accepted by the commission. If you require additional support, please contact [email protected]. 

Submissions should not exceed 3,000 words and should reach the commission by 5pm on Friday 31st January 2020. 

The submission must be a stand-alone document. Complementary information can be submitted via links into the main submission. However, this information will only be available to members of the commission on request. Please include hyperlinks to any publication, studies, reviews, statistics, grey literature, measures or metrics that you feel will support the evidence provided. 

The commission is encouraging submission from all sectors of society, including: academics, civil society, charities, bodies that represent citizens and professionals, businesses of all sizes including start-ups, local government, health professionals, health and social care bodies, and others.  

The commission also encourages members of the public to participate, in particular people living with HIV. 

Please note an additional submission process aiming to capture lived experiences and stories will also be available at www.hivcommission.org.uk from December 2019.

All written submissions become property of the HIV Commission. All submissions from organisations will be published at www.hivcommission.org.uk. Once you have received acknowledgement that the evidence has been received, you may publicise or publish your evidence yourself, but in doing so you must indicate that it was prepared for the HIV Commission. Individual submissions will be reviewed and assessed on individual basis before publication. No detailed or demographic information will be published for individual submissions.

All personal contact details supplied to the commission will be removed from evidence before publication. However, personal contact details will be retained by the HIV Commission and used for specific purposes relating to the commission’s work, for instance to seek additional information or to send copies of the final report. 

If you wish to include private, confidential or commercially sensitive information in your submission, please contact [email protected] to discuss this. The commission will consider removing this information from the submission prior publication on the website. 

The commission is not obliged to accept your submission as evidence, nor to publish any or all of the submission even if it has been accepted as evidence. This may occur where a submission is very long or contains material which is inappropriate or not relevant.

Persons and organisations who submit written evidence, may be invited to join an evidence hearing. Evidence hearing sessions will take place across the country and will be documented on www.hivcommission.org.uk. Persons invited to participate in evidence hearings will be notified separately of the procedure to be followed and the topics likely to be discussed. 

This is a public call for evidence. Please bring it to the attention of other groups and individuals who may not have received this document directly.