Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Nov 20, 2023
Open Peer Review Period: Dec 19, 2023 - Feb 13, 2024
Date Accepted: Apr 22, 2024
(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Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Feasibility and preliminary effectiveness of POSSIBLE: A multicomponent intervention to improve perceived risk for HIV among Black sexual minority men
ABSTRACT
Background:
Increased pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) use is urgently needed to substantially decrease HIV incidence among Black sexual minority men (SMM). Low perceived risk for HIV (PRH) is also a key unaddressed PrEP barrier for Black SMM. Peers and smartphone apps have are popular intervention tools to promote community health behaviors but few studies have utilized these in a multicomponent strategy. Therefore, we designed a multicomponent intervention called POSSIBLE that utilized an existing smartphone app called PrEPme® and a peer change agent (PCA) to increase PRH as a gateway to PrEP introduction. This paper describes the feasibility and preliminary effectiveness of POSSIBLE on PRH and willingness to accept a PrEP referral among Black SMM.
Objective:
This paper describes the feasibility and preliminary effectiveness of POSSIBLE on PRH and willingness to accept a PrEP referral among Black SMM.
Methods:
POSSIBLE was a theoretically guided, single group, pre-post pilot study conducted among Black SMM from Baltimore, MD between 2019 and 2021. POSSIBLE implemented a culturally congruent PCA and a mobile smartphone app called PrEPme® that allows users to self-monitor sexual risk behaviors and chat with the in-app community health worker to obtain PrEP service information. PRH was assessed using the 8-item PRH scale before and after baseline and follow-up study visits. At the end of each study visit, the PCA referred interested individuals to the CHW to learn more about PrEP service options.
Results:
A total 69 Black SMM participated, 80% of whom were retained for follow-up at month 1. The average age of participants was 32.5 years (range=19-62, [SD=8.1]). After baseline sessions, 42% participants were willing to be referred to PrEP services; 69% of them confirmed scheduled appointments with PrEP care teams. There were no statistically significant differences in PRH between baseline and follow-up visits (Table 3, t=-1.36; p=0.17).
Conclusions:
We observed no statistically significant improvement in PRH post-intervention. However, given the high retention rate, high acceptability, and strong participant satisfaction, POSSIBLE may be a feasible multicomponent strategy to implement among Black SMM. Future research should test a statistically powered peer-based approach on PrEP initiation among Black SMM. Clinical Trial: NCT04533386
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.