Design and feasibility of a social self-value intervention package to empower people living with HIV

ABSTRACT

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection affects the quality of life of infected people. It is well known that empowerment is important for appropriate access to health care and quality of care. However, there is currently limited availability of explicit methods to increase the empowerment of HIV-infected people. This study aimed to develop and test the feasibility of a social self-value package as an empowerment intervention method for HIV-infected people. One group included 8–10 participants and each session lasted for one and half hours. Six sessions in total were developed and one session was conducted in one week. A total of 66 participants were randomly selected for participating in the package, assessed its feasibility both quantitatively and qualitatively. Attitudes towards HIV-related issues significantly and positively changed after each session. Client satisfaction and acceptability of the intervention was very high indicating high feasibility with good design. The qualitative findings also supported the quantitative findings where both participants and counselors accepted and were satisfied with the structure and contents of the package. This study revealed that providing an inclusive six-week social self-value package for HIV-infected Nepali people appears to be feasible. Its effect on empowerment intervention will be measured by a randomized controlled trial.

KEYWORDS:

• Intervention
• HIV
• feasibility
• acceptability
• empowerment

Acknowledgements

This study was a part of the thesis of the first author for fulfilling the requirements of a Ph.D. degree in Epidemiology at Prince of Songkla University, Thailand, which was partially supported by the “Discipline of Excellence in Epidemiology (phase 2): Asia Mentoring Institute in Research”. The authors are grateful all the participants for their cooperation and sharing experiences. We thank counselors, staffs of ART center of Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital (STIDH), Kathmandu, Nepal, and research teams. The authors thank Mr Edward McNeil for extensive scientific editing of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Graduate School, Prince of Songkla University, Thailand [950/1538]