Outreach

Currently, the Institute is promoting, together with the "la Caixa" Foundation, a programme to disseminate knowledge and awareness of HIV/AIDS and research in this field, which aims to contribute to prevention and to promoting scientific careers among students. To this end, the program includes:

• Multimedia resources for students and teachers: activities to learn how HIV infects and is transmitted and how it can be prevented, how drugs work, what research is underway, etc.

• HIV vaccine experiment workshops: a biomedical research workshop for secondary students to investigate, using research laboratory techniques and instruments, whether a specific virus protein could be effective in developing a protective vaccine. To book a place: EduCaixa

• Participatory reflection days “What do you know about HIV/AIDS?”: outreach days when the current state of the disease and its research are explained, with students invited to question and debate different aspects. To book a place: EduCaixa

On the other hand, IrsiCaixa organizes participatory workshops in prisons in Catalonia with the aim of promoting prevention, informing about the current state of research and reducing the stigma associated with HIV. The participants are a researcher from IrsiCaixa, who works on aspects related to the virus, research and stigma, and an HIV+ person, who talks about their personal experience and what it means to live with the virus.

Through participation, the program gets both inmates and employees to assess their level of exposure to the virus and the stigma associated with it.

The pilot test was carried out in the Brians 2 penitentiary center in 2018. Since 2019, the project has been carried out in four penitentiary centers in Catalonia and has the collaboration of the Secretariat of Penal Measures, Reinsertion and Attention to the victim of the Generalitat de Catalunya.