Felton Communication, with funds from the Department of Health, created for Terrence Higgins Trust the national campaign It Starts With Me to create awareness that treatment can prevent HIV from being passed on.

As thousands of people with the disease are unaware of this fact, the campaign will run for two years in England and is targeting the two highest groups at risk of contracting HIV, gay men and African communities. These groups represent 75% of the epidemic.

There are over 100,000 people living with HIV in the UK, in which one in four remains undiagnosed, thereby increasing the risk of transmission. According to Juliette Mauve, account director at Felton Communication, the “campaign had to individually target gay men and the African communities in the UK, two rather disparate groups. To reach these two audiences exclusively, we have combined online and traditional media using videos, press and banner ads, venue posters, outreach and web. And it’s fully supported across the social networks.”

A multiple approach with testing, treatment and condoms can stop HIV. To raise awareness, a short video was created and it is available at the campaign’s website explaining how new drug treatments can reduce the level of virus in the body to an undetectable level, making a person with HIV and on treatment very unlikely to transmit the virus.

Sir Nick Partridge, chief executive at Terrence Higgins Trust, says “While a cure or vaccine for HIV remains stubbornly out of reach, what many people don’t realise is that medical advances mean it is now within our grasp to stop the virus in its tracks. By getting as many people with HIV as possible tested and on effective treatment, we should see new infection rates fall rapidly.”

The campaign’s approaches brought together photography of ordinary people by Michael Heffernan to highlight the commitment people need to make and it invited gay men and African communities to sign up to It Starts With Me online and assess their sex life to find out when they should have their next HIV test.

Information about where to take a test and order a free HIV home sampling kit is also available. Additionally, social media was used to encourage people to share Facebook posts, tweeting stories and spreading the word in their local communities.