Training health care providers to provide PrEP for HIV serodiscordant couples attending public health facilities in Kenya

ABSTRACT

To catalyse national scale up of PrEP for HIV serodiscordant couples in public health facilities in Kenya, the Partners Scale-Up Project, using a two-day case-based interactive curriculum, trained health care providers working in 24 high volume facilities in central and western Kenya on PrEP service delivery. Using a standardised test with questions about PrEP and antiretroviral-based HIV prevention we assessed gain in knowledge and confidence gain by comparing pre-and post-training test scores. We explored experiences of the training through key informant interviews after clinics started delivering PrEP. Of 716 health care providers trained, 235 (32.9%) were nurses, 144 (20.2%) were clinical officers and 155 (21.7%) were HIV counsellors. There was a significant improvement between the means of pre-test and post-test scores (61.7% (SD 17.4) vs 86.4% (SD 12.7) p < 0.001). The proportion of those who reported being ‘very comfortable’ providing care to HIV serodiscordant couples increased from 22.8% to 67.3% (p < 0.001). Key themes that training increasing both knowledge of PrEP and confidence to deliver PrEP to HIV serodiscordant couples emerged from interviews. This short, standardised training resulted in a substantial increase in knowledge of PrEP and in the confidence of the health providers to provide PrEP to HIV serodiscordant couples.

Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03052010

KEYWORDS:

• PrEP scale up
• HIV serodiscordant couples
• public HIV care clinics
• health care providers
• training
• Kenya

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the staff in all the participating HIV care clinics. The Partners Scale-Up Project trainers: Josephine Odoyo, Elizabeth Wamoni, Merceline Awuor, Annabel Dollah, Peter Michira, Peter Mogere, Sylvia Mugalla, Euticus Mwangi, John Njoroge, Bernard Nyerere, Joel Odondi, Fernandos Ongolly, Meresa Oyier.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Elizabeth M. Irungu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7401-3758

Additional information

Funding

The Partners Scale-Up Project is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the US National Institutes of Health under [grant number R01 MH 095507] and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation under [grant number OPP10556051].