FADE OUT HIV: An Educational Intervention Allying Black Community Barbers, Their Clients, and Community Clinicians

ABSTRACT

Black individuals in the United States are less likely to use medication to prevent HIV (pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP) than White individuals and are significantly more likely to receive a new HIV diagnosis.

Because of America’s long history of unethical medical and research practices and ongoing prejudice and bias, Black Americans have mistrust towards the medical community. This distrust, along with the social determinants of health, leads to low participation in health care. Health interventions at culturally “safe” and familiar venues are a popular strategy to engage Black Americans in health care. In the United States, barbershops are staples of the Black community and the utility of barbershops as a venue for delivering interventions has been successfully explored.

We describe FADE OUT HIV, a program designed to increase barberknowledge of prevalence of HIV in the Black community; facilitatediscussions between Black barbers and their Black clients about HIVexposure, prevention, and treatment; provide free HIV tests forbarbers’ clients; and educate community clinicians via live andenduring webcasts about HIV prevention and treatment.

Clinician education was designed to facilitate HIV screening and ensure that the barber clients would be referred to clinicians who were knowledgeable about HIV. The learning objectives of the education were focused on barriers that prevent HIV screening and PrEP uptake and strategies to overcome these barriers, monitoring recommendations for people using PrEP, the benefits and limitations of new and in-development PrEP, and the importance of rapid initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART).

As a result of this programme, 308 HIV tests were administered to barber clients at hosted events in Los Angeles and clinician knowledge and competence increased by 33% and 34%, respectively.

KEYWORDS:

• disparities
• HIV
• barber
• Black men
• pre-exposure prophylaxis
• PrEP
• testing

Disclosure statement

WDK is on the Speaker’s Forum of Viiv Health Care. All other authors have no other competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

Gilead Sciences, Inc provided an independent medical grant to fund the programme as described in the manuscript.