Feasibility and acceptability of a peer influencer delivered social media based intervention to promote mental health awareness for young Black and Latinx gay and bisexual men and transgender women

Abstract

Background

Young Black and Latinx Gay and Bisexual Men and Transgender Women (YBLGBMTW) face high levels of mental health related concerns. While online interventions show promise for addressing mental health conditions, few models focus on this population.

Methods

We used a pre-post design to assess the feasibility and acceptability of a peer delivered mental health awareness intervention for YBLGBMTW. This study was nested as the control arm from a larger study investigating if Peer Influencers (PIs) can improve HIV prevention. PIs helped develop an online outreach campaign to raise awareness of pertinent mental health topics as chosen by the PIs. PIs recruited YBLGBMTW participants from online social networks, posted contents over a six-week period, and participants completed baseline and post-intervention surveys.

Results

PIs successfully recruited 71 participants of whom 92% completed the six-week post-intervention survey. Participants had on average 6.7 engagements with posted contents and 82% of participants indicated being very satisfied with the intervention.

Conclusion

Using an intervention informed and delivered by PIs, participants were presented with information to address relevant mental health concerns. We found that such novel means of engaging this sample to raise mental health awareness is feasible, acceptable, and merits further development.

Keywords:

• LGBTQ
• mental health
• online
• LGBTQIA
• peer influencer

Acknowledgments

This study would not have been possible without the kind efforts of the participants and the peer influencers who were instrumental in designing and implementing this project.

Ethics statement

This study was approved by The Albert Einstein College of Medicine Institutional Review Board.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Data availability statement

There are ethical restrictions that prevent us from sharing de-identified data publicly. Specifically, the data contains potentially sensitive information since it involves a marginalized population. These restrictions are imposed by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Institutional Review Board. Interested, qualified researchers may request access to the dataset with appropriate IRB approvals by contacting the PI, Dr. Viraj Patel ([email protected]).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by National Institutes of Health [NIH K23MH102118] and the Einstein-Rockefeller-CUNY Center for AIDS Research [NIH P30AI124414]. The funding sources had no role in the study design, conduct of the study, data collection or analysis, interpretation of results, manuscript preparation, or decision to submit the manuscript for publication.