Sector(s)
Team Members
Project Team
Reason Digital
Tom Metcalfe
Jonathan Garrett
Daniel Lindsay
David Weston
David Fairbrother
James Barnard
Arfaan Anjum
Tom Davis
Terrence Higgins Trust
Will Howells
Dominic Edwardes
Visit the site
Visit the siteOrganizations Involved
Community contributions
bamboo_render_field entry in the readme is out of date
https://www.drupal.org/project/bamboo_twig/issues/2934998
'Stem words' links to algorithm broken
https://www.drupal.org/project/search_api/issues/2879892
Add token browser to config page
https://www.drupal.org/project/social_media/issues/2927133
Edit Unpublished Node Warning module
https://www.drupal.org/project/edit_unpublished_node_warning
Terrence Higgins Trust are working towards a world where people living with HIV are empowered and supported to live healthy lives. We built a website that helps them access testing and counselling when they need it, and that campaigns for an end to discrimination.
To enhance interaction with audiences and represent the vast breadth and value of their work, we rebuilt the Terrence Higgins Trust’s core website and crucial online services, making them accessible to more, wherever.
The most recent estimate suggests there were 89,400 people living with HIV in England in 2016. Of these, around 10,400 are undiagnosed so do not know they are HIV positive.
However, diagnoses of HIV have been declining since their peak in 2005. This has come as a result of increased condom use, more regular testing, improved availability of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and quick response of medication to slow down virus growth, in turn slowing HIV.
The continuation of this positive decline depends on sustained prevention efforts from organisations like Terrence Higgins Trust - the largest voluntary sector provider of HIV and sexual health services in the UK.
Terrence Higgins Trust have ambitious goals. One of which is to contribute to the end of HIV transmissions, another to test 100,000 people per year for HIV. However, delivering on the strategy to achieve these goals requires a strong digital service available to all on any device.
The reality for the team at Terrence Higgins Trust was as follows:
- Parts of the corporate site spec were almost 10 years old
- A complex and expensive incumbent Content Management System making routine updates to website content time consuming and overall poor value for the cost of running the website
- Centralised editing meant that sharing out was made difficult
- Lack of responsiveness - only 36% of website traffic in 2016 was from desktop computers. 64% was from mobile or tablet but the site wasn’t optimised for it
About the project
The Terrence Higgins Trust online offering had organically grown over the past 10 years with some parts of the live system being launched 5 years ago. The web had moved on a lot in those 10 years and the website needed to reflect that.
Design refresh
The Terrence Higgins Trust website wasn’t optimised for mobile despite 64% of traffic coming from tablet and mobile devices. The new theme is fully responsive giving all users a great experience regardless of the device they are using.
Online Advice and Counselling
Terrence Higgins Trust provide online counselling and advice to users for free. The management of this valuable service has been designed to require minimum oversight giving both those using and providing this service can manage their appointments via the site.
This functionality leveraged Drupal as a back-end for a Vue front-end giving users the optimal calendar booking experience.
Service users
Service users can register on the site to apply for these services. They then complete an assessment and are assigned a counsellor or advisor.
Applying for counselling
Service users can then book an appointment with their given counsellor or advisor. Email alerts let them know when their appointment is coming up. An email confirmation is also sent to the online counsellor or advisor.
These sessions are delivered via Skype or WhatsApp.
Booking an appointment
They can also cancel appointments and this will send an email confirmation to both the user and online counsellor or advisor .
Cancelling an appointment
Specialist users
Terrence Higgins Trust have counsellors and advisors (known as Specialist users) that are setup with accounts on the site.
Specialist users review assessments and assign other Specialist users to specific Service users. This emails both the Service and Specialist user to let them know they have been assigned.
Assessment review
Each Specialist user can set their availability in their calendar. This is shown to service users when they are booking appointments.
Setting availability
Self test kit ordering
Users are able to order self test kits for both HIV and Chlamydia. This is posted out to users once the orders have been passed from the Terrence Higgins Trust website onto the The Doctors Lab.
The first step in the process is checking the users eligibility. As the tests are funded by local authorities most tests are limited to any combination of geographical location, sexual orientation and ethnicity. The Terrence Higgins Trust are able to administer these eligibility criteria on the site and users are prevented from continuing with their order if they fail to meet them.
Once the user has passed the eligibility screening they confirm their mobile number via the Twilio SMS service and submit their order.
On a scheduled cron job the site will then export the latest orders to Azure storage for The Doctors Lab to process. They then upload the order updates when dispatched out to users.
The site will then send SMS reminders to users to remind them to send the kits back and the process is complete.
As this user data is highly sensitive it is encrypted via Sodium and decrypted when exported for The Doctors Lab.
Service Centre Search
The site offers a postcode search for users to find their closest centre offering sexual health services such as HIV testing or free condoms.
It also allows users to see services that can be provided online such as counseling and test kit ordering.
This is powered by the Geocoder and Geolocation modules using views to display the results.
Key metrics
- Orders for free condoms increased x3.0 post-launch
- Resource downloads increased x2.4 post-launch
- Online health assessments completed increased x1.6 post-launch
Why Drupal was chosen
We went with Drupal for the Terrence Higgins Trust because at its core it gives us a CMS that can easily cover the Terrence Higgins Trust’s content requirements. This includes creating flexible layouts with mixed media for their varied content needs.
Drupal was a huge plus was when setting up the online appointment system for users who want to access online counselling and advice. Users can register on the site and complete an assessment and once approved they can book appointments into a specialists calendar.
In addition interfacing with other systems was straight forward in Drupal. On the Terrence Higgins Trust site users can order free HIV and Chlamydia self testing kits. When the user has requested a test this is passed onto The Doctors Lab via Azure storage through to fulfilment.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
Paragraphs
The Paragraphs module has been used to allow content editors to create complex layouts from a pre-set list of paragraph types. These range in complexity from a classic WYSIWYG area right up to a list of related content items.
Media modules
The media suite of modules were chosen to allow content editors to add and re-use imagery, videos and downloads across the site. These modules provide a ‘library’ view for editors to pick from or upload new items to.
Search API (Solr)
The Search API and Search API Solr modules allow users to get lightning quick relevant results for their search terms. The site content editors have the ability to push pages to the top of the results for certain keywords.
Geocoding modules
This suite of modules powers the service centre search with Google Maps integration. Content editors only need to add the address of the centre and this suite of modules does the rest.
