JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Black adolescent and young adult women (AYAW) in the Southern United States (US) are disproportionately affected by HIV. Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is an effective, scalable, individual-controlled HIV prevention strategy that is grossly underutilized among women of all ages and requires innovative delivery approaches to optimize its benefit. Anchoring PrEP delivery to health services that AYAW already trust, access routinely, and deem useful for their sexual health offers an ideal opportunity to reach women at risk for HIV and to enhance their PrEP uptake and adherence. These services include those of family planning (FP) providers in high HIV incidence settings. However, PrEP has not been widely integrated into FP services, including Title X-funded FP clinics that provide safety net sources of care for AYAW. To overcome potential implementation challenges for AYAW, Title X clinics in the Southern US are uniquely positioned to be focal sites for conceptually-informed and thoroughly-evaluated PrEP implementation science studies.

Objective:

Assess inner and outer context factors (barriers and facilitators) that may influence the adoption of PrEP prescription and treatment services in Title X clinics serving AYAW in the Southern US.

Methods:

Phase 1 of Planning4PrEP is an explanatory sequential, mixed methods study consisting of a geographically-targeted online survey of Title X clinic administrators and providers in the Southern US, followed by key informant interviews (KIIs) among a purposively-selected subset of responders to more comprehensively access inner and outer context factors that may influence adoption and implementation of PrEP in Title X FP clinics in the South.

Results:

Phase 1 of Planning4PrEP research activities began in October 2017and are ongoing. To date, survey and KII administration is near completion with quantitative and qualitative data analysis scheduled to begin soon after data collection completion

Conclusions:

This study seeks to assess inner and outer contextual factors (barriers and facilitators) that may influence the adoption and integration of PrEP prescription and treatment services in Title X clinics serving AYAW in the Southern US.