Delivery of antiretroviral HIV treatment via community-based clubs can reduce retention of patients in care, according to a new research study published in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine by Colleen Hanrahan of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland and colleagues.
Despite advances in preventing and treating HIV infection, around a million people die from AIDS-related illnesses each year. To improve provision of very effective antiretroviral therapy to patients and thereby delay or prevent progression to disease, researchers are investigating methods of "Differentiated Service Delivery" (DSD) that make treatments available in ways that are more accessible to patients and can reduce issues such as stigma. A key question is how best to retain patients in care, ensuring consistent therapy and monitoring.
Hanrahan and colleagues did a randomized trial in Johannesburg, South Africa to compare retention of HIV patients in community-based adherence clubs with similar clinic-based clubs. The study involved clubs of 25-30 patients meeting in a community venue every other month for counselling, medication pick-up and screening for tuberculosis, as compared with those meeting in a clinic-based venue. Although community-based clubs are intended to be more convenient to patients and reduce pressure on clinics, as judged by the trial's primary endpoint 52% of patients were lost from community-based care over 2 years, as compared with 43% lost from clinic-based care (adjusted HR 1.38, 95% CI 1.01-1.87, p=0.032). Missing a club session was the most common reason for loss from care. As part of the study, patients lost to care were returned to standard clinic-based care, and health outcomes were similar in the two groups.
In an accompanying Perspective article discussing the research, Elvin Geng and Charles Holmes note that "DSD models are no panacea for complex issues in global health systems, but do represent a strategic pillar of the HIV response likely to grow in impact over time."
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Research Article
Funding:
Funding for this research was provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) [award number AID: 674-A-12-00033] (JB). https://www.pepfar.gov/about/agencies/c19395.htm The sponsor played no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests:
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Citation:
Hanrahan CF, Schwartz SR, Mudavanhu M, West NS, Mutunga L, Keyser V, et al. (2019) The impact of community- versus clinic-based adherence clubs on loss from care and viral suppression for antiretroviral therapy patients: Findings from a pragmatic randomized controlled trial in South Africa. PLoS Med 16(5): e1002808. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002808
Image Credit: London, Flickr
Author Affiliations:
Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
Witkoppen Health and Welfare Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa
Epidemiology for Global Health Institute, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002808
Perspective
Funding:
The authors received no specific funding for this work.
Competing Interests:
I have read the journal's policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: EHG is a member of the Editorial Board of PLOS Medicine.
Citation:
Geng EH, Holmes CB (2019) Research to improve differentiated HIV service delivery interventions: Learning to learn as we do. PLoS Med 16(5): e1002809. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002809
Author Affiliations:
Department of Medicine, University of California San Francisco, California, United States of America
Center for Global Health and Quality, Georgetown University Department of Medicine, Washington, DC, United States of America
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper:
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002809
Journal
PLoS Medicine