Previously submitted to: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (no longer under consideration since Jul 27, 2023)
Date Submitted: Jul 23, 2023
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Piloting CBO-PrEP: a community-based telehealth program for Latinx sexual minority men
ABSTRACT
Background:
Latinx sexual minority men (LSMM) face multi-level barriers to accessing HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).
Objective:
To address these barriers, we designed and implemented CBO-PrEP, a collaborative community-based, telehealth PrEP program for LSMM with three community-based organizations (CBOs) and a large integrated health care system in New York City, 2020-2023.
Methods:
We designed a PrEP delivery program through a collaborative process involving staff from local CBOs and a primary care-based HIV prevention program. Staff met weekly over a three-month period to establish protocols for referrals, obtaining insurance coverage, and navigation to appointments and laboratory testing. To assess feasibility, we extracted electronic medical record data including demographics and clinical outcomes of PrEP care: referral date, appointment dates, date of and number of navigator contacts, laboratory test results, and PrEP prescriptions.
Results:
Between December 2020-May 2023, 102 individuals were referred to CBO-PrEP; 72 (70.6%) were scheduled for an initial appointment. Out of 72 scheduled for an appointment, 58 (80.6%) were seen by a healthcare provider a median of 7.5 days after referral (IQR 2-19); 48 (82.6%) of initial appointments were via telemedicine. Of the 58 seen by a provider, 46 (79.3%) underwent initial laboratory testing; 20 patients (43.5%) used a commercial laboratory. A total of 52 patients (87.7%) received a PrEP prescription a median of 17.5 days (IQR 4.5-33.5) after referral.
Conclusions:
CBO-PrEP successfully engaged LSMM, a population that is often hard to reach. Expanding collaborative approaches with CBOs could have a significant impact on improving PrEP uptake for LSMM and other priority populations.
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