Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Feb 28, 2020
Date Accepted: Apr 10, 2020
A Community-engaged approach to Creating a Mobile HIV Prevention Application for Black Women: Preferences and Prototype
ABSTRACT
Background:
Background:
Black women are an important but relatively overlooked at-risk group in HIV prevention efforts. Although there is an aggregate decline of HIV diagnoses among women in the United States (U.S.); there are persistent disparate rates of new HIV infections for Black women compared to any other cis-gender female subgroup. Strategies to End the HIV Epidemic for all communities must consider HIV prevention messaging and message delivery mediums that are created with community input. Although mHealth is a popular platform for delivering HIV interventions, there are currently no mobile apps that target cis-Black women with the goal of promoting a comprehensive women’s reproductive health and HIV prevention lifestyle. Previous research recommends inclusion of the target population from project inception and iteratively throughout development, to promote use of the intervention.
Objective:
Objective:
The purpose of this study is to understand cis-gender Black women’s preferences for functionality, format, and design of a mobile HIV prevention app, and to examine their willingness to use an app for HIV prevention.
Methods:
Methods:
We conducted a series of four focus groups with 23 Black cis-gender women. Focus groups included discussion and demonstration elements to address cis-gender women’s general preference for apps, HIV prevention content that would be useful in an app, and preferred app features that would promote use of an HIV centric app. During focus group discussions, participants were shown narrated, custom wireframes of HIV prevention app prototypes to demonstrate potential app function.
Results:
Results:
Findings indicated 10 sub-themes within the coding structure of three overall themes: 1. Health content within the mobile app; 2. Mobile app functionality, format, and design; and 3. other suggested features. Specifically, participants detailed preferred educational content, content distribution, app esthetics, privacy considerations, and marketing of the app.
Conclusions:
Conclusions:
Findings suggest that Black cis-gender women preferred an app that integrated HIV prevention and optimal sexual health promotion. Participants provided a range of preferences for content integration and facilitators of app engagement with an HIV prevention app. Preferences centered on gender- and culturally- congruency of information and content, evidenced by visuals, language, and resources. Black cis-gender women are viable consumers for a mobile app HIV prevention intervention. Clinical Trial: n/a
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
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.