Common Ambition Bristol HIV initiative celebrates five years of community-led change

Common Ambition Bristol (CAB),an award-winning initiative that has helped tackle HIV stigma and increase access to testing for African and Caribbean heritage communities, is celebrating five years of community-powered change.

CAB brings together members of African and Caribbean communities and sexual health services as equal partners. Together they co-design and co-deliver culturally relevant approaches to HIV prevention and testing.

Community members, researchers, health professionals and local partners came together at Bristol’s Watershed on the 8th of October, for a special showcase event, marking the project’s achievements and sharing lessons learned from its pioneering approach to community-led health improvement. The event was supported by funding from Gilead.

Held during Black History Month, the event reflected on five years of work dedicated to addressing long-standing inequalities in HIV and sexual health. Through multimedia campaigns, community outreach, targeted health promotion events and community testing clinics, CAB has worked to break down barriers to information, challenge stigma and support Bristol’s ambition to end new cases of HIV by 2030.

Guests at the event heard first-hand stories from the CAB team, explored key research findings and reflected on what can be achieved when communities are empowered to lead change. The evening also featured energetic and entertaining live music performances from Nia Melody and MoYah. Live illustrator, Temujen Gunawardena captured the event’s key messages in real time.

The event reflected CAB’s commitment to co-production. From the very beginning, African and Caribbean heritage community members helped shape the programme’s design, delivery and evaluation, ensuring that activities respond directly to lived experiences and community priorities. This approach has enabled continuous learning, with insights from evaluation feeding directly back into service development and improvement. The team have produced a useful Co-production Toolkit based on their learning, which is free to download.

The programme’s impact was demonstrated through results of the comprehensive evaluation conducted by  University of Bristol researchers. Findings showed an increase in testing uptake as well as significant progress in HIV awareness, reductions in stigma and increased understanding of testing options. CAB’s Impact Report was shared with event attendees and is available to all online.

Speaking at the event, CAB partners emphasised that the project’s greatest success lies not only in improved health outcomes, but in valuing community expertise alongside professional knowledge. The resources needed for this level of co-production were framed as an ‘investment in equity’.

As CAB enters its next chapter, the team hope the lessons learned over the past five years will help shape future approaches to reducing health inequalities, strengthening community leadership and improving people’s health across Bristol and beyond.

Fiona Fox, CAB evaluation researcher and event organiser said:

“The story of Common Ambition Bristol shows what is possible when communities are not simply consulted but actively lead the change they want to see. Five years on, the evidence is clear: community-powered approaches can deliver meaningful, measurable impact. The Showcase event was a fitting celebration of all that CAB has achieved”.

 Matthew Wilson, CAB Project Manager and event organiser said,

‘”It was a pleasure to bring together so many people who have invested their time, expertise and passion into Common Ambition Bristol over the last five years to celebrate what we have achieved together. The CAB Showcase falling during Black History Month, with its theme of ‘Honouring our communities’, felt especially fitting. The CAB story shows what African and Caribbean Heritage communities can achieve when we are able to shape the services we need. As we continue to raise awareness of HIV, challenge stigma and increase testing and PrEP uptake in African and Caribbean Heritage communities, we hope our work will inspire others to work alongside communities to create lasting change”.

Jeremy Horwood, Principal Investigator said,

“Evaluating CAB over the past five years has shown us that sexual health services can become more accessible when communities and services share decisions and resources. The success of CAB is a testament to the dedication of everyone involved, particularly our community partners, whose insight, experience and leadership have driven the programme. Working as equal partners meant we could feed what we learned back into CAB as it went along, rather than saving it for a final report. We hope the CAB Co-production Toolkit helps others learn from our experience”.