Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Feb 3, 2025
Date Accepted: Jun 22, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Collaborating with a Community Advisory Board to Refine Skills Training in Active Recovery (STAR): a Video and Text Message Intervention to Prevent the Onset and/or Escalation of Posttraumatic Stress and Opioid Misuse Among Recent Sexual Assault Survivors
ABSTRACT
Background:
Although more than one in two US women will experience contact sexual violence in their lifetime and consequences can be chronic and impairing, few interventions exist to prevent the onset and/or escalation of posttraumatic stress symptoms and opioid misuse among recent sexual violence survivors.
Objective:
The current study describes a collaborative process of updating an integrated post-sexual assault video and developing a text messaging intervention program with a community advisory board (CAB) of sexual assault survivors
Methods:
Members of the research team met virtually for six 60-90-minute meetings with a five-member CAB of sexual assault survivors with diverse racial and gender identities located throughout the United States. CAB members were presented with written documents detailing an adapted video script and newly developed text intervention to address risk of substance misuse and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms following sexual assault. CAB members also received text messages to provide feedback from the end-user perspective. The research team used CAB meetings to elicit members’ feedback regarding these materials.
Results:
We identified overarching themes that addressed improving relatability (de-stigmatize and increase awareness of support; reduce technical language; increase representation in actors), content (increase social support; include substance-related assault; suggest activities), and wording (normalize different terms for sexual assault, reduce insensitive language) for the video intervention. For the text intervention, we identified themes relating to acceptability (timing, frequency, and format of texts), relatability (having an avatar introduce the program, identifying the study name in messages), content (messaging), and wording (increasing clarity).
Conclusions:
Findings reinforce the importance of including community members’ perspectives and suggestions to improve the acceptability and relatability of interventions, including the video and text message intervention described here.
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