Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve (a) gender parity, (b) equitable investment and (c) the focus on women for HIV (i) prevention, (ii) research, (iii) data and (iv) services.

We are committed to ensuring that everyone benefits equally from HIV prevention, treatment, and care, and the Department, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), NHS England, and a broad range of system partners are working together to develop a new HIV Action Plan which we aim to publish this year.

We know from the UKHSA’s latest data that women are not benefitting equally from the progress made on HIV as other key groups are, and as part of the new HIV Action Plan we are exploring ways to improve this. The plan will be informed by the UKHSA’s annual data, including the monitoring and evaluation report, which sets out key indicators to track progress towards our 2030 ambitions, including by gender. This data also helps system partners to understand where services can be improved and made more accessible to key populations.

The Department supports research and development, through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), which has commissioned research focused on women living with HIV, including the impact of menopause on HIV-positive women's wellbeing and engagement with HIV care, and the intersectional experiences of black women in the digitalisation of sexual and reproductive healthcare, including but not limited to HIV. In addition, the NIHR is funding a £20 million research project to evaluate an expansion of HIV opt-out testing in 47 emergency departments in England where HIV prevalence is high. Emergency department opt-out testing has successfully targeted those who are unlikely to engage with local sexual health services, such as women, and results from the research will be considered in the development of the new plan.

There has also been significant progress through the Department’s national HIV Prevention Programme, which supports communities disproportionately affected by HIV, including women, in particular black African and heterosexual women. The programme delivers National HIV Testing Week, aimed at improving testing and increasing awareness of HIV prevention. During 2024 Testing Week, self-testing was particularly popular amongst women, with a nearly 41% increase in total self-testing orders compared with 2023.