Since beginning her nursing career, Dr. Michelle Croston has been passionate about providing care for people living with HIV. This led her to join the team at North Manchester General Hospital’s Infectious Diseases Unit. During this time she gained a diverse range of experiences providing care in an evolving disease area, this has ranged from delivering palliative care to long-term chronic disease management. Her research studies to date have focused on how nurses elicit patients concerns in order to provide person-centered care, how nurses facilitate shared decision-making within HIV care and the effectiveness of person-centred communication training for HIV nurses. She has also led a project involving a national multidisciplinary team, which developed and then evaluated the effectiveness of using a holistic assessment tool within routine HIV care, in order to make consultations patient-centered. In 2011, Dr. Croston joined the National HIV Nurses Association (NHIVA) and, in 2013,was elected as Chair of the Association. During this time, she worked on national initiatives to improve care for people living with HIV and has collaborated with numerous national HIV organisations to raise standards of care. Alongside her national role, she is also an Executive Member of the European HIV Nurse Network (EHNN) and has been involved in developing their educational conferences. This work has led her to be part of the faculty for the International Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC) electronic educational resource.
Ian Hodgson has been involved in the international health sector for over 20 years. His areas of interest include HIV and TB stigma, sexual and reproductive health rights, cultural determinants of HIV prevention, and advocacy for HIV treatment access. He has worked on a range of projects in Asia, Africa, and Europe, and much of his work involves project monitoring and evaluation using a systematic qualitative approach. Most recently (2020) he has been working on the final evaluation of a large project in Mozambique focusing on maximizing LGBT access to HIV prevention and health services. In 2018 he led a mid-term review of a large HIV advocacy programme focusing on key populations in nine countries in Africa and Asia. Ian is on the Board of Directors of the European AIDS Treatment Group, and a coordinator of the European HIV Nursing Network. He is also an Associate Editor of the journal Ethnicity and Health, PhD supervisor for international health studies, and visiting lecturer at universities in the UK, Ireland, and Belgium.