6th BHIVA/BASHH Spring Conference 2026

Simon Collins, HIV i-Base

This year the BHIVA Spring Conference was organised jointly with BASHH and was attended by a record number of more than 1200 delegates and held from 27–29 April 2026 in Liverpool.

The conference included more than 40 oral abstracts and over 400 posters, and was attended by more than 1200 delegates.

Research was presented on all aspects of HIV and sexual health, with several main themes including:

Oral and injectable PrEP including new models for access (eClinics).
Reengaging people who have disconnected from care.
DoxyPEP use in the UK.
Late HIV diagnosis.

The programme was also grounded in the connections between politics and health care especially for the goals of bringing equity and equality to treatment and services.

Maleka Egeonu-Roby, Robert Boroughs and Henry de Vries (Photos © Andrew Perkins)

The opening session included a talk by Maleka Egeonu-Roby, from the Liverpool Race Equality Hub about how healthcare in Liverpool grew from the city’s difficult history rooted in colonialist expansion and the slave trade. [1]

In a second talk, Robert Burroughs, from Leeds Beckett University and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, then looked at how this complex history is selectively included or forgotten. This included the challenge for Liverpool’s internationally recognised medical institutions to overcome the legacy of this history. [2]

Modern sexual health services also need to understand their background of social control (including sex work), racism, the abolitionist movement, anti-contraception etc. Henry de Vries from the University of Amsterdam and Centre for Sexual talked about the importance of queer theory in order to withstand the current illiberal backlash. Since the 1980s, queer theory emerged from the HIV and LGBT rights movements with a more inclusive understanding of gender and sexuality. [3]

Although the BHIVA/BASHH conference was only an in-person meeting – and webcasts will not be available – the abstracts are already published online in an open-access supplement to HIV Medicine. [4]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/hiv.70225 (oral abstracts)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/hiv.70233 (poster abstracts)

The following summaries cover selected studies and other early reports will also be posted below as they are published.

References

Maleka Egeonu-Roby M. What the Water Carried: Liverpool, Slavery, and Living Inequality . BHIVA/BASHH 2026, Liverpool. Opening plenary talk.
Burroughs R. Histories of Liverpool, Empire, and Medicine. BHIVA/BASHH 2026, Liverpool. Opening plenary talk.
De Vries H. A brief history of sexual health from a queer perspective. BHIVA/BASHH 2026, Liverpool. Plenary talk.
Abstracts to the 6th BHIVA/BASHH Spring Conference, 27 to 29 April 2026, Liverpool, UK. HIV Medicine, volume 27, Supplement 1.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14681293/2026/27/S1