At GAT Portugal peer work makes super services

At the CORE – COmmunity Response to End Inequalities EU project meeting, we had the chance to visit two of the several community-based centers of GAT, the Portuguese Activist Group on Treatments. GAT, which was founded in 2001, is a structure of individual membership and cooperation between people from different communities and organizations affected by HIV and AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, viral hepatitis, and tuberculosis.

They started as an advocacy organization, working for legal and policy changes that positively affect the health, rights, and quality of life of people living with HIV or at risk of becoming infected. They soon realized that vulnerable groups that are most affected by HIV, such as men having sex with men (MSM), sex workers, trans people, people who use drugs, and migrants, need tailored HIV services, and they started to build these programs for them. Today, GAT has one of the biggest reaches of key populations in Portugal, with 100 thousand HIV tests conducted annually.

“GAT has several testing sites, all adapted more or less for key populations. All the sites are open to everyone but are built and offer services more tailored to key populations.” Said Mariana Vicente, general director of services and projects at GAT.

Moreover, these services employ peers, people with lived experiences, as their key staff. “Peers are people who share something in common with the people we support, either because they live with the infection or belong to a vulnerable group we support. It is often the peers who bring people to the interventions and can also be the link between people and different services.” Explained to us by Joana Assunção, a peer social worker at GAT.