Media Monitoring: 6 – 12 February

In support of National HIV Testing Week, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has become the first serving British Prime Minister and G7 leader to publicly take a rapid HIV home test.
The event, held at No. 10 Downing Street, was aimed at raising awareness about the availability of free and confidential HIV tests that can be ordered online from www.freetesting.hiv.
Joined by Terrence Higgins Trust Patron Beverley Knight, the Prime Minister demonstrated the ease and accessibility of at-home HIV testing kits. This initiative is part of a broader campaign to encourage regular home or self-testing, which is crucial to achieving the Government’s ambitious goal of ending new HIV cases in England by 2030.

Kent academics Professor Mark Smales and Professor Kathy Kotiadis are set to lead an £8.2 million project supported by a £3.8m Research England grant which will unite England’s world-class diagnostics expertise to accelerate the development and application of tools to improve disease diagnosis.
The project will see Kent launch a Centre for Advanced Diagnostics Development and Application (CADDA) in collaboration with the University of Manchester (Lead Professor Alan Dickson) and University College London (UCL, Lead Professor Jolene Skordis) to bridge the gap between academia, industry and end users.

The NIHR Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) in Behavioural Science and Evaluation, in collaboration with ARC West, has successfully evaluated the innovative use of vending machines for HIV testing.
This initiative is a part of a broader scheme aiming to revolutionise HIV prevention and monitoring strategies in the UK.
Researchers have focused on estimating HIV prevalence and incidence across the UK while also assessing various prevention methods such as test and treat, and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). The significant contributions of the HPRU have been pivotal in the UK’s stride towards achieving local, national, and international public health goals.

This government wants to turn the health care system in England from a service that treats us when we are sick to a service that helps prevent ill health.
That is going to need some fundamental rewiring of how money works in the NHS: how funding is distributed to different organisations, how payments and contracting systems are designed, and how financial performance is measured and managed.
Here are just a few illustrative ideas of what that change could look like.

In late 2023, there was an internal debate within the Labour Party as to whether to drop the term “life sciences” from its literature.
Insights from a leading polling company were sent to advisors detailing a lack of public understanding of what the term means, how the industry is determined, and what it does.
Ultimately, the Party stuck with the term and published its ambitious plan for the sector entitled “A Prescription for Growth”