Episode 3: PrEP for women (Part 3)

So you've come on the podcast today to talk to us, as we spoke with Tamir from our outreach team earlier, about new pathways for PrEP delivery.

But I think it would be useful for our listeners if you could give them a brief overview of what PrEP is.

Okay, so PrEP's medication to help stop the transmission of HIV.

It's been available through sexual health services since 2020.

And whilst there's been an uptake in the men and bisexual men, it's low in the uptake in women, which is hence why this pilot's come and the collaboration with the Women's Health Hub.

Because this national target is to reduce HIV transmission by 2030.

As I mentioned, there's this new project that has come about, this place-based approach to PrEP delivery, building new pathways for people who might otherwise not access PrEP to get onto PrEP.

This project's in collaboration with the Elton John AIDS Foundation and intends to bring PrEP to underserved communities.

Can you explain a little bit about this initiative and how your involvement in it came about?

Yeah, so we've worked with Access.

So Brownlow Primary Care Network has worked with Access for a long time.

We have a good collaboration with our community neighbourhood partners.

And this came about because Brownlow is a very large GP practice.

It's got 91,000 patients.

We're across four sites.

We've got a lot of underserved communities, such as the homeless, street workers, transgender students, asylum seekers.

So we're a very diverse practice.

So when we were approached to work with you regarding this pilot, we thought that we have the ideal cohort of patients that would benefit from talking about PrEP.