Hubert Department of Global Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
College of Medicine and Life Sciences, University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio, USA.
AIDS Patient Care STDS. 2023 Feb;37(2):95-102. doi: 10.1089/apc.2022.0193. Epub 2023 Jan 25.
Half of all people living with HIV (PLWH) in the United States are not retained in HIV medical care. The utility of appointment reminders and clinic-based retention support services is often limited by the inability to contact PLWH who are out of care (PLWH-OOC) due to disconnected phone lines, full voice mails, and housing instability. Between June 2019 and May 2021, as part of a larger mixed-methods study in Metro Atlanta, Georgia, we conducted surveys with 50 PLWH-OOC and interviews with 13 PLWH holding a variety of clinic stakeholder roles (patients, Community Advisory Board members, and peer navigators) to explore preferences for clinic communication and peer outreach and factors impacting uptake. Although phone calls, text messages, and calling secondary contacts were most preferred, the spread of preferences was wide. Surveys and interviews highlighted the high acceptance of peer outreach visits, with trust, support, and privacy being key factors driving the uptake. Findings underscore the need for clinics to offer a suite of communication and outreach strategies and assess patient preferences for traditional and nontraditional outreach models to more effectively reach, re-engage, and ultimately retain PLWH-OOC.
美国所有感染艾滋病毒的人中,有一半没有接受艾滋病毒医疗护理。由于电话线路中断、语音信箱已满和住房不稳定等原因,预约提醒和基于诊所的保留支持服务往往无法联系到脱离护理的艾滋病毒感染者(PLWH-OOC),从而限制了其效用。在 2019 年 6 月至 2021 年 5 月期间,作为佐治亚州亚特兰大都会区一项更大的混合方法研究的一部分,我们对 50 名脱离护理的艾滋病毒感染者进行了调查,并对 13 名担任各种诊所利益相关者角色(患者、社区咨询委员会成员和同伴导航员)的艾滋病毒感染者进行了访谈,以探讨对诊所沟通和同伴外展的偏好以及影响参与度的因素。尽管电话、短信和联系次要联系人是最受欢迎的,但偏好的分布范围很广。调查和访谈突出了同伴外展访问的高接受度,信任、支持和隐私是推动参与的关键因素。研究结果强调了诊所需要提供一系列沟通和外展策略,并评估患者对传统和非传统外展模式的偏好,以更有效地接触、重新参与并最终留住脱离护理的艾滋病毒感染者。