Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Dec 4, 2021
Date Accepted: Dec 15, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Interactive Transition Support for Adolescents Living with HIV using Social Media (InTSHA): Research Protocol
ABSTRACT
Background:
Adolescents living with perinatally-acquired HIV often have poor retention in care and viral suppression during the transition from pediatric to adult based care.
Objective:
To evaluate a mobile phone-based intervention, InTSHA: Interactive Transition Support for Adolescents Living with HIV using Social Media, among adolescents living with perinatally-acquired HIV as they transition from pediatric to adult care in South Africa.
Methods:
InTSHA uses encrypted, closed group chats delivered via WhatsApp to develop peer support and improve communication between adolescents, their caregivers, and healthcare providers. The intervention is based on formative work with adolescents, caregivers, and healthcare providers and builds on several existing adolescent support programs as well as the Socioecological Model for Adolescent and Young Adult Readiness to Transition (SMART). The final InTSHA intervention involves ten modules conducted weekly through moderated WhatsApp group chats with adolescents and separately with their caregivers. We will randomize 80 South African adolescents living with perinatally-acquired HIV who are aware of their HIV status and aged between 15 to 19 years to receive either the intervention (n=40) or standard of care (n=40).
Results:
We will measure acceptability of the intervention as primary outcome and evaluate feasibility and preliminary effectiveness for retention in care and viral suppression after completion of the intervention and at least six months after randomization. In addition, we will measure secondary outcomes evaluating the impact of the InTSHA intervention on peer support, self-esteem, depression, stigma, sexual education, connection to healthcare providers and transition readiness.
Conclusions:
If successful, the intervention will be evaluated in a fully powered randomized controlled trial with a larger number of adolescents from urban and rural populations to further evaluate the generalizability of InTSHA. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03624413
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.