Continuing our interviews with the new Medical Humanities in Practice Research Fellows, today we catch up with Phil Samba. Phil is currently a project coordinator for research and community knowledge generation at The Love Tank. Read on to find out about Phil’s research project on the barriers and opportunities of long acting injectable PrEP – a medication that reduces the risk of contracting HIV – for Black Queer Men.
If your research was a film, what would the title be?
If my research was a film, the title would be Injectable PrEP: Inside the Minds and Bodies of Black Queer Men. This is quite dramatic, but I love that about it and wouldn’t have it any other way.
What will you be doing during your Medical Humanities in Practice Research Fellowship?
I am going to answer the following research questions: What are the opportunities offered by injectable PrEP for Black queer men and what, if any, barriers can these men identify that are relevant to its provision? To do this, I will conduct four culturally sensitive community knowledge dinners with six to ten Black queer men each across one year from four different cohorts: aged 18-25, 26-35, 36-45 and 46+.
This research is requisite and can help prepare for possible barriers to injectable PrEP ahead of time instead of playing catch up, which has previously been the case for oral PrEP, MPOX vaccines, more recently DoxyPEP and potentially MenB vaccines.
Alternative peer-led and informal methods are useful for the HIV and sexual health sector, which often struggles with engagement with Black men. This project will also contribute to the disgraceful lack of existing knowledge there is on Black British queer men.
This project has a second set of aims: to explore the utility of community knowledge dinners as a useful method for HIV/health research. I will explore the value of undertaking this method for engagement with Black men who are often problematically classified as “hard to reach.” I believe there are no hard-to-reach communities, only hard-to-reach services.
What expertise and experiences will you be drawing on?
To complete this project successfully, I will draw on different expertise and experiences. First and foremost, there’s my own lived experience as a Black queer man who was born and raised in London. Then there’s nearly eight years of health promotion expertise I possess in HIV and sexual health working primarily with queer men of colour, especially Black queer men. Lastly, I will draw on over five years of research experience, where I have been involved in a range of different projects around inequalities within queer healthcare.
Why are you excited about working in the medical humanities?
I am excited about working in the medical humanities because I am an experienced peer researcher, and I thoroughly enjoy conducting research. I have done incredible things and I’m a really good researcher. I don’t have an advanced degree in public health or social research, and as a result, there is often a ceiling that limits my participation within peer research. I am constantly met with barriers that stop me from conducting more research on Black queer communities – including barriers for application to certain research grants.
This fellowship is an incredible opportunity for someone like me who has excellent experience in research but doesn’t have certain qualifications. I will use this project as an opportunity to develop my skills as a researcher even further, and I will use it to better the health and wellbeing of my community and, in turn, change how we work with Black gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men in the HIV and sexual health sector overall.
What changes would you like to see as a result of your research?
There are many changes that I would like to see as a result of my research such as a prioritisation of Black British queer men rather than depending on data on Black American queer men in HIV research and health research overall. I would like to see more social research on injectable PrEP within Black men. I would like to see more health promotion around newer technologies in HIV and sexual health, such as DoxyPEP and the up and coming MenB vaccine.
What interests or hobbies do you have outside of your research that might surprise people?
Outside of my research, I adore writing! I’ve contributed an essay to the anthology book MANDEM, a collection of essays exploring what it means to be a Black man in contemporary Britain. I’ve also written for The BBC, The Guardian, Huck Magazine, Metro UK and Gay Times, and have been featured in The Telegraph, British GQ, Dazed, Buzzfeed, Novara Media, and Pink News.
We warmly welcome Phil to the Discovery Research Platform and look forward to working with him.
This year four Medical Humanities in Practice Research Fellowships were awarded to support the delivery of novel research projects from June 2025 to June 2026. We will be launching another Fellowship application round for 2026 to 2027 in October – if you are interested in the scheme, please keep an eye out on our website and social media.
Read more about our Medical Humanities in Practice Research Fellows:
