Good Practice Guide

In November 2004 the National African HIV Prevention Programme (NAHIP) will launch “Doing it Well: A good practice guide for choosing and implementing community-based HIV prevention interventions with African communities in England”. This document will provide a comprehensive resource for commissioners and service providers helping them to deliver better quality services for people from African communities affected by HIV in England. Below is an excerpt from the first chapter of the guide.

The African HIV epidemic in UK is one of the big challenges for those involved in efforts to reduce the prevalence of HIV. In the last ten years, health promotion specialists, community workers and volunteers have used various innovative methods to reach the African community, in an effort to provide individuals with the information and skills necessary to reduce the spread of HIV. In the absence of a standard practice guide for implementing HIV prevention interventions among African communities, much of this work has been based on their experience of mobilising these communities and using acquired skills to influence people’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviour.

This practice guide is based on the learning and experience derived from the audit [1] of current interventions and literature review. It gives a set of guidelines for each community-based intervention that has been and can be used to reduce the prevalence of HIV among African communities in England.

Using this guide will enable health promotion workers to:

• Understand the HIV prevention interventions that can be used with African communities.
• Find the structure and consistency they need in order to plan and deliver community-based HIV prevention interventions.
• Choose appropriate tools that will enable them to plan, deliver, monitor and evaluate HIV prevention activity.
• Monitor the delivery of HIV prevention activities and begin the process of evaluating their impact on reducing the spread of HIV among African communities.

Identified need for the practice guide

The need for this practice guide was identified in HIV and AIDS in African Communities: A framework for better prevention and care, (African HIV Policy Network and National AIDS Trust, 2003) which called for:

• The building of a national infrastructure for African HIV prevention work to facilitate national collaboration and coordination;
• The identification and sharing of best practice models;
• The development of quality standards and the creation of a focus for prevention training and capacity-building.

The National Strategy for Sexual Health and HIV: Implementation Action Plan (Department of Health, 2002) also recommends developing a health promotion toolkit that includes best practice guidance on working with targeted groups and communities. This practice guide for community-based HIV prevention will form part of this toolkit.

Who can use this practice guide?

Primarily African community-based HIV prevention providers, but other professionals providing community-based HIV health promotion services to African communities will also find it useful.
It may also have a role in the commissioning of community-based HIV prevention work with African communities.

1 Chinouya, M., Auditing HIV prevention interventions targeting African residents in England (unpublished report)