AVERT

AVERT (formerly also known as the AIDS Education and Research Trust) is an international AIDS charity based in Horsham, South East England, United Kingdom.

Early work

AVERT was founded in 1986, by Peter Kanabus and his wife Annabel, daughter of former Sainsbury's chairman Robert Sainsbury. In its first fifteen years the charity focused on producing educational publications and funding HIV-related educational, social and medical research.

A number of AVERT's publications, such as the AIDS: Working With Young People (1993) teaching pack were based on substantial educational research. In addition many thousands of AVERT's booklets were distributed in the UK each year, covering such topics as sex education, sexuality and HIV.

Medical research funded by AVERT included the first ever study of the effect of pregnancy on the progression of HIV disease, and social research included studies of HIV and drug use in UK prisons.

In 2001 the charity decided to cease funding research and producing printed publications, and instead to concentrate on its educational website and work outside the UK in countries with a particularly high or rapidly increasing rate of HIV infection and AIDS.