Accessing hair and beauty is everyone’s right
On World AIDS Day 2024, George House Trust launch the UK’s first HIV and Beauty guide for professionals working in the hair and beauty industries.
Understanding HIV A guide for hair and beauty professionals [PDF] is a collaboration between George House Trust and top beauty industry expert and educator, Sam Marshall.
It is designed to empower hair and beauty professionals to become fully HIV-inclusive businesses. It provides up-to-date HIV facts and science with best practice guidelines to support and educate hair and beauty practitioners about HIV and how to eliminate HIV discrimination in hair and beauty settings.
By raising awareness of the facts around HIV, this guide aims to end discrimination within the beauty, hair and barbering industry and to help reduce HIV stigma in wider society.
Darren Knight, Chief Executive of George House Trust said:
“We are proud to partner with Sam Marshall to develop this important guide for the beauty industry. Someone’s HIV status must never be a barrier to accessing beauty services.
We want to support the beauty industry to improve understanding around HIV and provide an effective toolkit for the whole industry. We found from our research that 52% of people have been refused a treatment due to their HIV status and this shows there is still unnecessary and unacceptable stigma attached to living with HIV, and a lack of awareness around the advances in treatment and what that means for people living with HIV.
We hope that by launching this HIV and Beauty Guide, we will bring the issue to the forefront, across this sector and beyond.”
Sam Marshall, The Beauty Guru said:
“I’m delighted to have spearheaded the UK’s first HIV Beauty Guide alongside George House Trust. It will help us move towards a more inclusive industry, something I’m extremely passionate about.
I implore all beauty professionals to put the guide into practice, in particular removing the HIV status questionnaire from the consultation process. Beauty practitioners do not need to know someone’s HIV status to undertake beauty, hair, or cosmetic procedures, even those that produce blood or are considered invasive.
Thanks to effective treatment, people living with HIV cannot pass it on. Additionally, universal hygiene protocols (which should be standard practice in any professional salon) will eliminate the risk of any blood-borne virus being transmitted.
As an inclusive beauty salon, we would never ask clients for their status as it is irrelevant and unnecessary. Beauty is for everyone and we believe that everyone who wants to access beauty services should feel comfortable in doing so.”
Download the guide [PDF].
Find out more about our HIV and Beauty work.