Fast Track Cymru – December 2023 – Bulletin #2

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Senedd 2023

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

A lot has happened recently – we’ll do our best to keep it short.

Firstly, we have been funded by the Welsh Government to March 2025 to establish Fast Track Cymru and Fast Track arrangements across Wales and we now have three part time Development Workers and a Manager. The Development Workers are currently assigned to support emerging and extant Fast Tracks as follows:

And leading for Fast Track Cymru overall: Lisa Power – fasttrackcities@hiv.wales

Newport signed up formally as the second Fast Track region in Wales on November 20th and North Wales will become the third on December 6th – welcome! If you would like to discuss creating a Fast Track region in any other area of Wales, please contact Fast Track Cymru as above.

As part of the Action Plan implementation, some of our earlier projects have been taken on nationally and Wales HIV Testing Week this year was funded and run by Public Health Wales with support from Fast Track Cymru. We hope you’ve already seen (and used) the assets created but you can find them at https://phw.nhs.wales/topics/wales-hiv-testing-week/ 

We’d like to thank all of you who took part in Wales HIV Testing Week, with videos and photos, staffed stalls in shopping centres and hospitals, gave presentations, did community testing and other events and who amplified social media posts. A full evaluation is being undertaken but we already know that the message had more then two million views via social media alone and has certainly raised awareness of testing messages.

Our research and evaluation links with Cardiff University are now set to go national, linking up work across Wales. If you are interested in collaborating with other researchers and academics in a national HIV research and evaluation network, please contact Dr Adam Williams at williamsad7@cardiff.ac.uk

We are also working closely with Public Health Wales on creating and adapting short training modules for health and social care staff – more of that in 2024. And we’re starting work on stigma; the first collaboration is a brilliant (they made it, we just helped) video from the Welsh National Opera, featuring Nathaniel J Hall from It’s a Sin and a cast of Cardiff volunteers and written by Andrew Loretto. You can see the full video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwzGJajvgIE and there’s a shorter version on Instagram and other social media – feel free to amplify the message!

We also heard new research, about stigma and why some people are reluctant to test, at the Global Fast Track conference in Amsterdam in October where we met up with the only two other Fast Track nations in the world – Scotland and Ireland – and formed a Celtic Coalition with them to share learning and challenges.

Our World AIDS Day Senedd Reception, sponsored by Buffy Williams MS and with a speech from Minister for Health Eluned Morgan as well as our Chair Gian Molinu, was well attended by politicians, clinicians and community figures and many useful conversations were had.

Now Testing Week and World AIDS Day are coming to an end, we can look to new projects for the future. We’re supporting a pilot peer support group via Cardiff Council; working on a new campaign on stigma and barriers to testing for the spring and focussing on underserved communities at higher risk of HIV. We are also looking to develop and offer media training to a panel of people with HIV or on PrEP who are prepared to speak out in Wales – if that could be you, drop us a line at advocacy@hiv.wales

Our hosts Pride Cymru have asked us to tell you that they have office and training space for hire to Welsh-based charitable organisations in central Cardiff. Please contact cath@pridecymru.com for more info. Come and share our base!

And finally – Happy Hanukkah, a very Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and if you have fun – get tested!

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