JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The number of new HIV diagnoses in the United States continues to slowly decline, yet, men who have sex with men and transgender women remain disproportionately affected. Key to improving quality of prevention services are providers who are comfortable broaching sexual health and HIV prevention with people across the spectrum of gender identities and sexual orientations. Pre-service training is a critical point to establish HIV prevention and sexual health education practices before providers’ practice habits are established.

Objective:

We developed interactive online educational modules and tested their impact on HIV prevention knowledge and awareness in future providers.

Methods:

Sexual health providers at an academic hospital, research clinicians, community engagement professionals, and New York City community members were consulted to develop seven online educational modules, which were piloted among medical students. We assessed knowledge of HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention and comfort assessing prevention needs of various patients via online questionnaires administered before and after our educational intervention. We conducted exploratory factor analysis of the items in the questionnaire.

Results:

Pre- and post-module surveys were completed by 125 and 89 students, respectively, from all four years of training. Before the intervention, the majority of students had heard of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) (99.2%) and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) (92.7%). Before the training, 31% (38/123) of students agreed that they could confidently identify a patient who is a candidate for PrEP or PEP – this increased to 91% (81/89) following intervention.

Conclusions:

Our findings highlight a need for increased HIV and STI prevention training in medical school curricula to enable future providers to identify and care for diverse, at-risk populations. Interactive online modules offer an effective way to teach these concepts.