Health First: Projects - African Health Forum

Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham African Health Forum

Dates: 1991 - ongoing

News:

The forum started around 1991 - 1992. It meets on a bi-monthly basis on the last Thursday of the specific month.

Health First contacts: Anna Aguma, Maria Loizou

African Health Forum directory, details of member organisations
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What we want to achieve:

To be a vessel through which the needs of African communities are identified and advocated
To serve as the liaison body with local authorities, Primary Care Trusts in LSL and the Strategic Health Authority, where the key areas of activities are geared towards influencing policy development, resource and organisational development
To fund small scale project initiatives through the African Small grants Scheme as well as to inform and make recommendations about the development of Health First's African HIV and sexual health promotion work.

What we're doing:

The African Communities programme is a key focus in terms of funding and resource support from the Strategic Health Authority, Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham Primary Care Trusts and Health First
Membership is steadily growing facilitating effective networking, information sharing and partnership working as well as promoting research and evaluation which is leading to improved service provision and uptake amongst African communities
The recent development of the Forum Newsletter with its potential for elevating the work of the Forum, publicising the work of individual member organisations and providing a platform for the wider sharing of views, ideas and experiences around maximising the Forum's outputs

Where we're doing it:

Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham.

Who we're working with:

The Forum currently has 103 members of which African Community Based Organisations (CBOs) form over 92%. The remaining members are representatives from the statutory sector.

More detail:

The African Health Forum is arguably the most vibrant African Forum in London, and indeed the whole of the UK. The Forum was initiated in 1991/92 by a few African organisations who recognised the growing crisis of HIV within their specific communities and who joined forces to look at ways of tackling this. By coming together, the Forum has demonstrated a commitment to achieving a common objective: alleviating the health and social inequalities facing the African community.

Membership of the Forum has been growing steadily from just a handful of organisations in the early years to over 100 today. It now represents the diverse ethnic, cultural and religious groups who come under the umbrella of African Communities. It meets every two months at Health First and has a Chair and Vice Chair, both from African CBOs and both voted in by fellow members.

Each year Health First operates a small grants scheme targeted at members of the LSL African Health Forum wishing to undertake innovative HIV prevention and sexual health promotion projects. In addition, a key aspect of the Small Grants Scheme is to develop the capacity of the organisations and to encourage sustainability of their programmes.