Health+Law
30 October 2024

The law plays a powerful role in public health responses to HIV and the health and wellbeing of people living with HIV. However, it has been over 30 years since the last major formal review of the legal environment surrounding HIV in Australia. Understanding more about how the law affects people living with HIV in Australia today is a core goal of our national legal needs (LeNS) study. As a preliminary step toward this, we conducted a legal mapping review of HIV-related case law in Australia. This involved searching for, screening, and analysing the corpus of HIV-related judgments and tribunal decisions that have occurred in Australia across all jurisdictions. This type of review seeks to ‘map’ the main areas of law in which HIV arises and to identify the key HIV-related legal issues of concern. To date, this review provides the most comprehensive mapping of HIV and the law in Australia since the advent of U=U, and includes findings that may inform future law reform and policy regarding HIV in Australia. Our report includes some preliminary discussion of the implications of the review’s findings.

Health+Law
9 October 2024

Understanding more about how the law affects people living with hepatitis B in Australia is a key objective of our national legal needs (LeNS) study. As part of LeNS, we conducted a legal mapping review of hepatitis B-related case law. This involved searching for, screening and developing an analysis and discussion of the corpus of hepatitis B-related judgments and tribunal decisions that have occurred in Australia across all jurisdictions. A review of this kind is a way to broadly ‘map’ the state of the law and legal issues of concern regarding hepatitis B in Australia. This is the first legal mapping review ever conducted in Australia on hepatitis B-related issues in case law. Our report includes a discussion of the results and preliminary implications of our findings.

Sexual Health
10 October 2024

The 2023 ACT NOW Community Forum, held as part of the 12th International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Science in Brisbane in July 2023, convened 150 delegates to discuss HIV-related migration laws. This paper reports on key themes discussed at the forum, including areas for ongoing investigation and policy activity, and proposes 10 recommendations for policy, law and practice change.

To watch proceedings from ACT NOW on Queensland Positive People's website, click here.

Health+Law
31 January 2024

In response to the inconsistency across Australian jurisdictions regarding the legal status of using spit hoods in custodial contexts, this research brief reviews the available clinical literature around the transmission of hepatitis B and C via spiting and biting. The brief finds that the risk of transmission via spitting is very low for hepatitis B and negligible for hepatitis C; for biting, risk of transmission is also low.

Health+Law
2 December 2023

Little has been understood about the legal issues, needs and access to justice for people living with HIV and viral hepatitis in Australia. This article, published in the AIDS & Behavior journal, analysed unique legal administrative data from the HIV/AIDS Legal Centre (HALC) to develop insight into the trends and types of HIV and viral hepatitis-related legal issues experienced by HALC clients, as well as how these legal issues and HALC client demographics have changed over time, from 1992 to 2020.

Health+Law
1 December 2023

This article, published in the Journal of Law and Medicine, presents the first data on the incidence and impacts of unmet legal needs for those affected by a Sexually Transmissible Infection (STI) or Blood Borne Virus (BBV) in Australia using a survey administered to a sample of the Australian sexual health and BBV workforce.

UTS
13 October 2022

Media release from the University of Technology Sydney on the launch of Health+Law.

HALC
1 November 2021

A guide to immigration for HIV positive people, their family members and others who fail the health criteria.