Anticipating Policy, Orienting Services, Celebrating Provision: Reflecting on Scotland’s PrEP Journey

Abstract

AbstractPrEP in Scotland came with great expectation and celebration. As the first country in the UK to offer PrEP through the National Health Service (NHS), Scotland was heralded as a leader in HIV prevention. This chapter asks: how has the anticipation of PrEP shaped provision and use within the health system; how does the emergent and ongoing orientation of PrEP towards specific risk practices affect awareness, access and use, but also wider narratives of prevention, inequalities and ‘progress’; and, what kinds of biosexual citizens does it demand and produce? The chapter explores how the implementation of PrEP and the specific nature of its roll-out contribute to an orientation towards certain (gendered) PrEP users and PrEP use. It considers how the anticipation of PrEP as a biotechnology for particular risk practices, bodies and communities shapes promissory HIV prevention futures and determines what success and ‘celebration’ could be.