Modus Operandi (c2006)

By opening an on-going positive patients discussion forum, patients empowered with individual and collectively represented points of views can have those views aired - both directly and indirectly - to Clinic Management and so through to the Chelsea & Westminster NHS Foundation Trust in general.

It is our aim that suggestions made by the Forum will be presented for discussion at various Clinic Management meetings, attended by nominated representatives from the patients’ forum. All views presented will remain un-attributable.


Get Going

The Forum will operate on two levels: there are monthly meetings, which will physically bring together as many interested parties to the Forum as possible, and there is an online forum (see Membership page) and web site http://www.frontlinehiv.net which provides additional access to all Forum members, and will include those members who are unable or prefer not to attend the meetings

  • The monthly meetings will be held on the 1st Tuesday of every month at the Kobler Clinic at 6:00 – 8:00 pm. We plan to develop separate business or working group meetings once the group has been further developed, which may be held on different days.2
  • Frontlinehiv.net will operate continuously, powered by messages from the online group and the minutes and notifications of the Forum group meetings. It will also serve as an online storage-area for any information gathered by FRONTLINE HIV Forum members, which will all be stored on the pages of the www.frontlinehiv.net website.


Get Focused

To begin with the focus will be split in two separate, but equally important, streams:

  • The first places the onus on the Forum to address fundamental issues like what the Forum is, what we want it to do for us, how it is run and how we want it to develop. We then need to adopt the appropriate organisational structure required to achieve that level of development, and then together, manage it’s implementation.
  • The second stream will maintain and continue the discussion of patient’s needs and explore any issues affecting clinic services.

Once the FRONTLINE HIV Forum organisational structure is in place, the split will cease, and main focus will be placed on positive patients’ needs and empowerment through capacity building and patient-led projects, in both of the ongoing discussions and in the workgroups.


Get In Touch

FRONTLINE HIV Forum will be contactable by email, letter or message left for us at any of the Clinic’s Reception areas.3 To be kept personally informed, please e-mail the FRONTLINE HIV Forum Group at administration@kvnforum.net. The minutes of the meetings and up-dates on events will all be posted on the web site. You can also leave your email address at the Kobler Clinic reception or at the Information Exchange Helpdesk and it will be forwarded to the online forum.


Get Involved

If you are a patient at either the Kobler, 56 Dean Street or Nkosi Johnson Unit, regardless of age, gender, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation, you are already part of the FRONTLINE HIV Patients’ Forum and are welcome to get in touch and come along to our meetings.

There is no requirement to attend meetings in order to express your views or have a say in what the Forum does. All communications are treated in confidence and you are welcome to unsubscribe at any time. We look forward to welcoming you.


1 Acknowledgements and Best Wishes go out to the Bloomsbury Patients Network, who kindly consented to our plagiarising their own Mission statements, adapting it to our needs.

2 To be discussed, further refined, and then agreed by the Forum.

3 To be discussed and agreed by the Forum - and then only implemented if agreed by Clinic Management of the three HIV Treatment Centres.