HIV Prevention Handbook presented at Fast-Track Cities 2024

GEC Steering Committee member Rep. Jack Patrick Lewis (L) with GEC Head of Operations Andrew Slinn (R) at Fast-Track Cities 2024

The Global Equality Caucus has presented its HIV Prevention Handbook project at the 2024 Fast-Track Cities conference in Paris, engaging multiple stakeholders on our campaign to take prevention policy proposals directly to legislators.

GEC Head of Operations Andrew Slinn, joined at the conference by GEC Steering Committee member Rep. Jack Patrick Lewis, spoke about the Handbook’s success during an e-poster session as part of the main conference programme. He highlighted how GEC has worked with legislators across different world regions to identify which prevention strategies are most effective in the HIV response, ensuring interventions are tailored to local contexts and are reaching communities that face barriers to accessing healthcare.

The Fast-Track Cities Initiative, now in its 10th year, is a global partnership between cities and municipalities to support community-driven responses in the mission to attain zero new HIV infections and zero new AIDS deaths. Key to this ambition is the work of locally elected officials, who must work strategically to implement health and education programmes that reach communities disproportionately impacted by HIV.

The 2024 conference was opened by Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, who was a founding signatory of the 2014 Paris Declaration to end the HIV epidemic. Hidalgo hailed the city’s progress on bringing down new HIV infections - with Paris having seen a drop of 33% in HIV incidence over the past decade - but warned a renewed push was needed by lawmakers to ensure this trend does not stagnate.

Across the three-day conference, GEC met with civil society representatives from around the world to hear how community champions have grown and delivered different local initiatives to address the epidemic, including a visit to a Parisian sexual health clinic providing stigma-free services such as PrEP, testing, counselling, and advice on harm reduction.