Angela B. Hoth, Cody Shafer, Dena Behm Dillon, Randy Mayer, George Walton, Michael E. Ohl
Abstract
Access to HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is often poor in small urban and rural areas because of stigma and long distances to providers. The Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) and The University of Iowa (UI) created a regional telehealth program to address these barriers ("Iowa TelePrEP"). We describe initial TelePrEP results and share lessons learned.
IDPH personnel in sexually transmitted infection (STI) clinics, Disease Intervention Specialist and Partner Services (DIS/PS), and HIV testing programs referred clients to pharmacists at UI. Clients could also self-refer via a website. Pharmacists completed video visits with clients in the community on smartphones and other devices, arranged local laboratory studies, and mailed medications. We performed a retrospective record review to quantify rates of PrEP referral, initiation, retention, guideline-concordant laboratory monitoring, and STI identification and treatment.
Between February 2017 and October 2018, TelePrEP received 186 referrals (37% from public health) and completed 127 (68%) initial video visits with clients. Median client age was 32; 91% were men who have sex with men. Most clients with video visits (91%) started PrEP. Retention in TelePrEP at 6 months was 61%, and 96% of indicated laboratory monitoring tests were completed. Screening identified 37 STIs (8 syphilis, 10 gonorrhea, 19 chlamydia). DIS/PS linked all clients with STIs to local treatment within 14 days (80% in 3 days).
Using widely available technology and infrastructure, public health departments and healthcare systems can collaborate to develop regional telehealth programs to deliver PrEP in small urban and rural settings.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 13. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 24 November 2023.
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#3,555,078
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Outputs from Sexually Transmitted Diseases
#374
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#56,805
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Outputs of similar age from Sexually Transmitted Diseases
#9
of 43 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,732,945 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 89th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,230 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.5. This one has done well, scoring higher than 88% of its peers.
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