Purpose

African and Caribbean Heritage communities continue to experience structural inequalities and barriers to HIV prevention, testing and care, including stigma, racism and gendered barriers. Locally, African and Caribbean Heritage women are particularly under-represented in HIV testing data. CAB’s work has created safe, culturally competent spaces that can reach communities who may not engage with mainstream services.
CAB has been recognised nationally for effective co-production and has built a delivery model that combines a small staff team with a wider network of volunteers and community members. CAB has two dedicated salaried posts: a Project Co-ordinator (funded via wider sexual health contract arrangements) and a Community Engagement Facilitator (currently funded via non-recurrent partner funding).
The Community Engagement Facilitator role is essential for sustained community health promotion—especially for women—and for coordinating, supporting and safeguarding volunteers who are central to CAB’s delivery model. This grant is predominantly intended to stabilise the Community Engagement Facilitator role and protect the capacity that enables community reach, volunteer coordination and women’s engagement.
As an HIV Fast Track City, Bristol is committed to accelerating progress towards zero new HIV transmissions. The new HIV Action Plan for England, 2025 to 2030 sets a national ambition to end new HIV transmissions through a framework of five priorities: Prevent, Test, Treat, Thrive and Collaborate. The plan emphasises the need to ensure equitable progress across five populations where inequalities persist, including ethnic minority gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, Black African heterosexual men, and Black African heterosexual women.
Under the ‘Collaborate’ priority, the national plan requires local partners to carry out a comprehensive HIV needs assessment using existing data tools and engaging with communities to identify service gaps and priorities. The findings will inform the development and publication of local HIV plans across the country during the 2026/27 financial year.
This grant enables Bristol to meet the local HIV Action Plan requirement to carry out an HIV needs assessment by funding Brigstowe to deliver community engagement and focus groups that capture lived experience and community insight, and support the development and dissemination of a survey for the general public, service users, people living with HIV and other professionals.
This report provides transparency in the decision making of the Director of Communities

Decision

The decision is to fund the CAB Community Engagement Facilitator role, employed via Brigstowe, ensuring ongoing community-led HIV and sexual health promotion with African and Caribbean Heritage communities in Bristol. An additional requirement of the grant is to fund community engagement activity that supports a Bristol HIV needs assessment.

Alternative options considered

Brigstowe supports anyone living with or affected by HIV in Bristol and the surrounding areas. Brigstowe also host the CAB project and are the employer of the Community Engagement Facilitator. For these reasons, Brigstowe is the most appropriate choice of provider for this grant, and an invaluable partner in Bristol Fast Track City’s aims to reduce new transmissions of HIV in the city, and to reduce HIV-related stigma.