Feasibility and acceptability of a video library tool to support community health worker counseling in rural Afghan districts: a cross-sectional assessment.

Background: Rural Afghan populations have low skilled birth attendance rates and high maternal and infant mortality. Insecurity and armed conflict, geographic barriers, and cultural norms often hinder women's access to facility-based reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health (RMNCH) services. Community health workers (CHWs) are critical agents for behavioral change in this and similarly fragile settings, where RMNCH information exposure is limited by low literacy and mass media access.

Adapting a health video library for use in Afghanistan: provider-level acceptability and lessons for strengthening operational feasibility.

Background: Community health workers (CHWs) in Afghanistan are a critical care extender for primary health services, including reproductive, maternal, neonatal, and child health (RMNCH) care. However, volunteer CHWs face challenges including an ever-expanding number of tasks and insufficient time to conduct them. We piloted a health video library (HVL) intervention, a tablet-based tool to improve health promotion and counseling by CHWs.

Attitudes and perceptions towards novel objective measures of ARV-based vaginal ring use: Results from a global stakeholder survey.

Results of recent microbicide and pre-exposure prophylaxis clinical trials have shown adherence to be a significant challenge with new HIV prevention technologies. As the vaginal ring containing dapivirine moves into two open label follow-on studies (HOPE/MTN-025 and DREAM) and other antiretroviral-based and multi-purpose prevention technology ring products advance through the development pipeline, there is a need for more accurate and reliable measures of adherence to microbicide ring products. We previously conducted a comprehensive landscape analysis to identify new technologies that could be applied to adherence measurement of vaginal rings containing antiretrovirals.

Evidence-Based Strategies for Shortening Informed Consent Forms in Clinical Research.

Long informed consent forms (ICFs) remain commonplace, yet they can negatively affect potential participants' understanding of clinical research. We aimed to build consensus among six groups of key stakeholders on advancing the use of shorter ICFs in clinical research. Partnering with the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN), we used a modified Delphi process with semistructured interviews and online surveys.

HPTN 062: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial Exploring the Effect of a Motivational-Interviewing Intervention on Sexual Behavior among Individuals with Acute HIV Infection in Lilongwe, Malawi.

Objective: We pilot tested a Motivational Interviewing (MI) -based counseling intervention for individuals with Acute HIV Infection (AHI) to reduce risky sexual behavior in Lilongwe, Malawi.

Methods: Twenty-eight individuals diagnosed with AHI were randomized to receive either brief education alone, or the brief education plus the MI-based intervention, called Uphungu Wanga. Participants in Uphungu Wanga received four sessions delivered on the day of diagnosis, three days later and at weeks 1 and 2 with a booster session at week 8; participants were followed for 24 weeks from diagnosis.

The sexual risk context among the FEM-PrEP study population in Bondo, Kenya and Pretoria, South Africa.

Background: Incidence rates in the FEM-PrEP and VOICE trials demonstrate that women from diverse sub-Saharan African communities continue to be at substantial HIV risk.

Objective: To describe and compare the sexual risk context of the study population from two FEM-PrEP trial sites-Bondo, Kenya, and Pretoria, South Africa.

Methods: At baseline we collected information about demographics, sexual behaviors, and partnership beliefs through quantitative questionnaires with all participants (Bondo, n = 720; Pretoria, n = 750).

HPTN 062: a feasibility and acceptability pilot intervention to reduce HIV transmission risk behaviors among individuals with acute and early HIV infection in Lilongwe, Malawi.

Acute HIV infection (AHI) is a relatively brief period of time when individuals are highly infectious and the opportunity to intervene to prevent forward transmission is extremely limited. HPTN 062 partnered with CHAVI 001 to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a motivational interviewing (MI)-based counseling intervention to reduce HIV-transmission risk behaviors among individuals with acute and early HIV infection in Lilongwe, Malawi. Participants were randomized to receive either (1) brief education sessions about HIV and AHI; or (2) the same brief education sessions plus an MI-based counseling intervention called Uphungu Wanga.