Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Nov 21, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Nov 21, 2019 - Nov 22, 2019
Date Accepted: Jul 26, 2020
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
eHealth communication with clients at community-based HIV/AIDS service organizations
ABSTRACT
Background:
Providing HIV/STD testing and prevention education, medical and non-medical case management, housing assistance, transportation services, and patient navigation are just a few examples of how community-based HIV/AIDS service organizations (ASOs) will help the United States realize the goals of the updated National HIV/AIDS Strategy.
Objective:
In this study, we assess staff at ASOs beliefs about electronic data security, electronic communication behaviors, and interest in using eHealth communication with their clients.
Methods:
Staff (N=59) were recruited from seven ASOs. Three ASOs were located in South Carolina, and four ASOs were located in Texas. We used state department of health websites to identify ASOs. Staff were eligible if they provided HIV/STD prevention education to clients. A recruitment letter was sent to ASO leaders who then used snowball sampling to recruit eligible staff. We assessed beliefs about electronic data security, electronic communication behaviors, interest in using eHealth communication in the future, and sociodemographic characteristics.
Results:
Among 59 at staff ASOs that participated in our study, 66% were very or completely confident that safeguards are in place to keep electronically shared information from being seen by other people; 68% used email, 58% used text messages, 25% used social media, 15% web-enabled video conference, 8% used a mobile app, and 2% used something else to communicate electronically with clients. More than half were very interested in using eHealth communication in the future for sharing appointment reminders (64%) and general health tips (58%) with their clients. Less than half were very interested in using eHealth communication in the future to share HIV medication (49%) and vaccination (39%) reminders with their clients. All P values examining differences based on beliefs about data security were > 0.05.
Conclusions:
Staff at community-based ASOs will play a critical role in moving us forward towards realizing the goals of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy. More research is needed to better understand how to build the capacity of community-based ASOs and their staff to help their clients overcome communication inequalities that have the potential to negatively affect HIV/AIDS-related outcomes for these vulnerable populations. Clinical Trial: Not applicable
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.