Clinical trial NCT06408142: Universal Test and Connect for HIV Service Delivery in South Africa
Official title: Universal Test and Connect for HIV Service Delivery in South Africa
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING
Conditions: Human Immunodeficiency Virus
Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis
Emergency Department
South Africa
Lead sponsor: Johns Hopkins University
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation
name: National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
First posted: 2024-05-09
Enrollment: 1573
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 12
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Observational model: COHORT
Time perspective: PROSPECTIVE
Sampling method: NON_PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: Cross-sectional population attending the Emergency Departments, which are both publicly available 24-hour Emergency Departments that serve the surrounding neighborhood/catchment area.

Brief summary: The goal of this study is to determine how many patients with HIV or at high risk of getting HIV attend the Emergency Department (ED) in South Africa (SA). the investigators will integrate HIV assessment in the ED and see how many people who would be a candidate for a drug that prevents HIV (PrEP). Universal test and connect (UTC) is a strategy that universally tests all patients and connects patients to long-term care, whether HIV positive or negative, including referrals for PrEP. The investigator's goal is to use UTC across two busy 24-hr EDs in Cape Town, SA.

Detailed description: The overarching goal of this proposal is to deliver comprehensive HIV services for patients with HIV or at high risk of HIV acquisition attending the Emergency Department (ED) in South Africa (SA). The investigators seek to integrate HIV assessment in the ED and define the opportunity for delivering biomedical HIV prevention interventions in this setting. In SA, a high proportion of people living with HIV (PLHIV) receive care in the ED: 25% of ED patients are living with HIV, and of these only 45% are on ART (compared to 75% nationally); 7% of ED patients with HIV have not previously been diagnosed. The EDs provide care to high volumes of adults who may not otherwise interact with the health system, and thus are an important testing and linkage to care venue. Access to both preventative (pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis) and therapeutic (ART (antiretroviral) initiation) HIV services from the ED can expand care to otherwise missed populations and aligns directly with a differentiated service delivery model that is integrated within existing, sustainable service delivery models.

Universal test and connect (UTC) is a holistic strategy that endeavors to accelerate the race to reduce new HIV infections and deaths from AIDS-related illnesses. Trials in Africa have shown that within three years of implementing a community-wide UTC program, HIV incidence decreased by 20-30%, and AIDS-related mortality decreased by 20% . This strategy resulted in increased diagnosis among men and provided preventative resources to young women. Given ED patients' vulnerabilities and lack of access to routine services, UTC is a new and needed tool to provide comprehensive ED-based HIV services. Currently, testing is haphazard, and while occupational exposure may be addressed, preventative strategies for other high-risk exposures are not.

The investigators seek to demonstrate that the ED has a high volume of patients that could potentially benefit from HIV services (i.e., HIV testing, ART initiation, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)/post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) initiation, and linkage to care) and that HIV service delivery in this venue is necessary and feasible to integrate. Furthermore, the investigators seek to explore the missed opportunity to deliver PrEP in the ED, thus expanding PrEP access to all segments of the population. The investigators propose to demonstrate that PrEP initiation in the ED is an important investment to providing holistic care for ED patients and that providers will be accepting of ED-based PrEP delivery if HIV testing and PrEP initiation can be effectively integrated into clinical workflow.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Patients attending the Emergency Department
* Ages \> or = 12 years old

Exclusion Criteria:

* Patients unable to provide written informed consent - i.e., have a depressed level of consciousness (head trauma or concurrent alcohol/substance abuse), determined as critically ill (triage score of "emergent"), or
* do not speak a language spoken by the study team (English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa).

Primary outcomes:
measure: The proportion of potentially PrEP eligible patients in the ED
timeFrame: Baseline
Secondary outcomes:
measure: The number of potentially PrEP eligible patients with tuberculosis or acute HIV
timeFrame: Baseline
measure: The number of potentially PrEP eligible patients with renal dysfunction
timeFrame: Baseline
measure: The number of potentially PrEP eligible patients who report baseline difficulty to engage in follow up required to be on PrEP
timeFrame: Baseline
Other outcomes:
Locations:
Study officials:
affiliation: Johns Hopkins University
name: Bhakti Hansoti, MD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: