Optimising awareness of, access to, and uptake of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis among underserved communities in the UK

About the Project

PhD Opportunity: Improving Access to HIV PrEP for Underserved Communities in the UK

Are you passionate about health equity, community-centred research, and real-world impact? Do you want your doctoral work to contribute directly to the UK’s goal of ending new HIV transmissions by 2030? This exciting PhD project offers a unique opportunity to help transform HIV prevention by co-developing inclusive, culturally responsive approaches to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for communities who have historically been underserved by existing services.

Despite PrEP’s proven effectiveness in preventing HIV, access and uptake in the UK remain uneven. While PrEP has contributed to falling HIV diagnoses among White gay and bisexual men, many other groups continue to face substantial barriers. These include people of Black ethnicity, women, heterosexual men and women, recent migrants, and trans individuals—communities who often experience stigma, structural exclusion, and limited engagement in traditional sexual health services. With the expansion of PrEP delivery through community pharmacies, digital platforms, and new long-acting formulations on the horizon, now is a pivotal moment to reimagine what equitable PrEP provision can look like.

This PhD project will explore how awareness, access, and uptake of PrEP can be strengthened by working in partnership with the communities most affected by HIV inequities. Through a multi-stage programme of qualitative research, evidence synthesis, creative co-production, and early-phase intervention prototyping, you will examine what effective, culturally relevant and community-informed PrEP interventions should look like in practice.

You will begin by conducting a systematic or realist review to map global and UK initiatives designed to improve PrEP uptake. This will help identify promising models of differentiated service delivery—approaches that position PrEP within community settings, beyond conventional clinical environments. Drawing on insights from this review, you will then undertake qualitative research with underserved groups and key stakeholders to explore lived experiences, barriers, enablers, and expectations around PrEP.

Building on this evidence, you will co-produce practical guidelines for designing inclusive PrEP interventions and develop a prototype intervention tailored to the needs of one or more underserved communities. This prototype will be tested in real-world settings such as pharmacies, community organisations, or digital services, enabling you to evaluate its feasibility, acceptability, and potential for scale-up. Finally, you will develop a knowledge-mobilisation strategy to share findings with policymakers, national health bodies, and HIV sector organisations—ensuring your research contributes meaningfully to future action plans and prevention strategies.

You will be supported by a highly experienced supervisory team at Cardiff University and the University of Bristol, with expertise spanning trials, behavioural science, pharmacy practice, implementation science, and qualitative research. With flexibility built into the project design, you will have the freedom to shape the methodological direction of your PhD, whether through different analytic frameworks, alternative intervention development models, or focus on specific communities.

If you're committed to tackling health inequalities, passionate about community-led research, and eager to produce work with real policy and public health relevance, this PhD offers an exceptional opportunity to create meaningful change.