Positive Health Check intervention tool usage during a feasibility pilot in HIV primary care clinics

ABSTRACT

Positive Health Check (PHC), an interactive, web-based intervention, provides tailored behavioral health messages to support people with HIV in their HIV care. Users interact with a virtual doctor and based on responses to tailoring questions, PHC delivers relevant content modules addressing treatment initiation, medication adherence, retention in care, sexual risk reduction, mother-to-child transmission, and injection drug use. During a one-month feasibility pilot of PHC, patients in four HIV primary care clinics were invited to use PHC and tool usage metrics were collected and assessed. Descriptive analyses were conducted to characterize how the tool was used based on behavioral risk scenarios presented.

Ninety-seven patients accessed PHC as part of the pilot, with 68 (70.1%) completing the intervention on average in 15 min. Out of 85 patients who viewed behavioral tips and commitments, 66 (77.7%) selected at least one tip to practice and 41 (48.2%) made at least one commitment to ask their provider a question. Patients spent the most time with adherence and sexual risk reduction content. The high level of tool engagement suggests that PHC was acceptable to patients regardless of length of time since diagnosis. PHC can be completed within a single visit and is a promising tool for PWH.

KEYWORDS:

• HIV behavioral intervention
• Mobile Health Intervention
• Positive Health Check
• virtual doctor
• web-based intervention
• HIV primary care

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the clinics and patients that were part of the PHC pilot implementation, as well as other members of the PHC Team that worked on the pilot project- Olivia Burrus, Robert Furberg, Megan A. Lewis, Alexa Ortiz, and Brittany Zulkiewicz from RTI International; Camilla Harshbarger, Gary Marks, and Ann O’Leary from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Siva Rangarajan from SeKON.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author Disclosure statements

All included authors report no disclosures or conflict of interest (competing, personal financial interests, funding, employment, or other competing interests).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) contract 200-2007-20016, Task Order 0025, awarded to RTI International. PHC was developed and piloted by RTI International in partnership with CDC under this contract.