Sophia Forum

Sophia Forum promotes and advocates for the rights, health, welfare and dignity of women living with HIV through research, raising awareness and influencing policy.

We do this through:

• Bringing together information and research on the issues affecting women living with HIV

• Creating partnerships with organisations and individuals delivering services

• Building relationships with policy makers.

We make sure that women living with HIV are meaningfully involved in all our work and a significant number of our Trustees are women living with HIV.

In addition to our work to protect and promote the rights of women living with HIV, Sophia Forum also works on access to HIV prevention. We campaign for equal access to effective HIV prevention for women vulnerable to HIV acquisition. Our work on prevention is shaped by Prevention Principles, to uphold effective and equitable prevention for all:

• No individual means of prevention should be considered in isolation, but as part of a comprehensive package of prevention

• Preference should be given to education/ programmes/ interventions that are: evidence-based; least burdensome; accessible to all; equitable to all; monitored for impact with data disaggregated by gender, sex, age and other factors.

• Any decision-making on access, availability and programmes should have meaningful involvement of all communities that might benefit (including women).