Article Text
Abstract
Objective Youth represent a population disparately impacted by the HIV epidemic. With most new HIV diagnoses occurring among adolescents and young adults, novel approaches to address this disparity are necessary. The objective of the current study was to describe the Youth to Telehealth and Text to Improve Engagement in Care (Y2TEC) intervention, which aims to fill this gap. The Y2TEC intervention (trial registration NCT03681145) offers an innovative approach to improve HIV treatment engagement among youth living with HIV by focusing on treatment barriers related to mental health and substance use. This allows for a holistic approach to providing culturally informed intervention strategies for this population.
Participants and setting The Y2TEC intervention was developed for youth with HIV in the large metropolitan area of the San Francisco Bay Area. The Y2TEC intervention was developed based on formative interdisciplinary research and is grounded in the information–motivation–behavioural skills model.
Results The intervention includes 12 sessions each lasting 20–30 minutes, which are delivered through videoconferencing and accompanying bidirectional text messaging. The intervention sessions are individualised, with session dosage in each major content area determined by participant’s level of acuity.
Conclusions The Y2TEC intervention is well positioned to help decrease HIV-related disparities in youth living with HIV through its innovative use of video-counselling technologies and an integrated focus on HIV, mental health and substance use.
- HIV & AIDS
- substance misuse
- public health
Data availability statement
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
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Data availability statement
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request
Supplementary materials
Supplementary Data
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Footnotes
Contributors CM took the primary role of manuscript preparation. AW and VG are familiar with the clinical aspects of the intervention and reviewed the intervention description thoroughly. DLP, MJ and CDR provided guidance on manuscript preparation and scientific writing. PS has oversight of intervention development and the pilot study and served as corresponding author. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding The study is funded by the California HIV/AIDS Research Program (award number HD15-SF-060) (coprincipal investigators PS and CDR) and the National Institutes of Health (award number K24DA037034, MJ).
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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