The Health Not Prisons Collective (the Collective) is an intersectional national initiative launched in 2020 by Counter Narrative Project (CNP), the Positive Women’s Network – USA (PWN), Sero Project, Transgender Law Center (TLC), and the U.S. Caucus of People Living with HIV (the HIV Caucus) — longtime collaborators led by, and accountable to, communities most affected by HIV criminalization in the United States.

Our strategy incorporates education and training; grassroots and grasstops organizing; policy analysis and advocacy; legal intervention; and narrative change designed to shift discourses about HIV, risk, blame, responsibility, and the role of the carceral state, including detention, centering racial and gender justice.

The Collective prioritizes authentic engagement, activation, training, and leadership rooted in our principles and deep investment in our communities. We are united against the use of policing, prosecution and imprisonment in public health crises, and committed to the abolition of the carceral state, including immigrant detention, which places the profits of the few over the health and lives of our communities. We insist on scrutiny of any forms of policing and surveillance, including those developed or deployed for public health interventions.

In these efforts, we are dedicated to the leadership, health, safety, and dignity of BIPOC, people living with HIV, people involved in the sex trade, substance users, imprisoned and detained people, people who access harm reduction services, immigrant and migrant populations, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people, people with disabilities, and no- and low-income people.

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