The use of mobile health technologies (mHealth) to ameliorate HIV care has considerably risen in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) since 2010. Yet, the discrepancies in the results of accompanying studies warrant an updated and systematic consolidation of all available evidence. We report a systematic review of studies testing whether text/image messages, interactive voice response reminders, or calls promote adherence and retention to antiretroviral therapy (ART) in LMICs. We systematically compiled studies published in English until June 2018 from PubMed/Medline, Web of Science, WHO database, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, and manual search. We used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2009 and used frequency analysis to assess reported findings. In total, we compiled 35 published articles: 27 completed studies and 8 protocols. Among the main 27 studies, 17 examine adherence, 5 retention, and 5 both measures. Results indicate that 56% report positive and statistically significantly impacts of mHealth on primary outcomes, the remaining 44% report insignificant results. While 41% of studies found a positive and significant effect for adherence, only 12% improved retention. The evidence shows ambiguous results (with high variability) about the effectiveness of mobile phone-assisted mHealth interventions to boost adherence and retention to ART. The literature also points to short follow-up periods, small samples, and limited geographical coverage. Hence, future research should focus on evaluating longer interventions with more patients spread across wider areas to address whether mHealth can be effectively used in LMICs.
BackgroundRetention in care and adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) among people living with human immunodeficiency virus (PLHIV) is a critical challenge in many African countries including Burkina Faso. Delivering text messaging (short message service, SMS) interventions through mobile phones may help facilitate health service delivery and improve patient health. Despite this potential, no evaluations have been delivered for national scale settings to demonstrate the impact of mobile health (mHealth) for PLHIV.ObjectivesThis study aims to test the impact of SMS text messaging reminders for PLHIV in Burkina Faso, who are under ART. The evaluation identifies whether patients who receive SMS text messages are more likely to (1) retain in care (measured as a dichotomous variable), (2) adhere to antiretroviral regimens (measured as the number of doses missed in the past 7 days), and (3) experience slower disease progression (measured with T-lymphocytes cells). The second objective is to assess its effects on the frequency of health center visits, physical and psychosocial health, nutrition and whether the type of message (text vs image) and frequency (weekly vs semiweekly) have differential impacts including the possibility of message fatigue over time.MethodsThis 24-month, wide-scale intervention implements a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the impact of four variants of a mHealth intervention versus a control group. Our sample comprises adult patients (>15 years of age) undergoing antiretroviral therapy with access to mobile phone services. Multivariate regression analysis will be used to analyze the effect of the intervention on the study population. Data collection is done at baseline and three follow-up waves 6, 12, and 24 months after the intervention starts.ResultsThe targeted 3800 patients were recruited between February 2015 and May 2015. But political uncertainty delayed the launch of the intervention until October 2015. Data analysis has not yet started. The first follow-up data collection started in April 2016. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research that explores the effects of mobile message reminders using a wide-spread sample across an entire nation over a 2-year horizon, especially in a Francophone African country.ConclusionsWe hypothesize that the interventions have a positive impact on retention in care and adherence to ART schemes and that a more sluggish disease progression will be observed in the short run. However, these benefits may fade out in the long run. The study expects to advance the research on how long mHealth interventions remain effective and when fatigue sets in the context of wide-scale interventions. This information will be useful in designing future wide-scale mHealth interventions in developing countries.
Achieving more equitable, safer, and resilient societies—crucial dimensions of social sustainability—depends on durable transformations in people’s behavior. Traditional policy interventions attempt to influence people’s behavior in different ways, such as increased policing, fines, or awareness campaigns, but often have limited effects because they fail to systematically address local determinants of behavior. In this paper, we analyze two complex behavioral policy interventions to illustrate how installation theory can provide a framework to systematically analyze and design for large-scale behavioral change to support social sustainability. We focus on two of Antanas Mockus’ iconic “civic culture” interventions to reduce deaths in traffic accidents and domestic violence in Colombia. To study them, we collected intervention reports, citizens’ narratives, creators’ accounts and press articles to identify their main characteristics and behavioral techniques. In our results, we find that the civic culture approach used in these two interventions addresses physical, psychological and social determinants of behavior in ways that reduce reactance and promote mutual regulation and collective agency. By unraveling the essential factors of behavioral influence, installation theory and related frameworks provide a useful guide to structure, analyze and report interventions that address the behavioral components of social sustainability.
This article examines the adaptation and biomedical transition of people living with HIV (PLHIV) to antiretroviral treatment (ART) in Burkina Faso. The study employs a representative sample of 3625 randomly selected patients. Subjective and objective measures of health and their predictors are compared for short-term (≤24 months) versus longer-term ART adherents (>24 months) in a cohort study. Subjective health is measured as Likert scale self-rating and objective health as CD4 count. The results show that subjective and objective health capture different aspects of adaptation to ART: 90% of the short-term and 94% of the longer-term patients give a subjective health rating of at least good, while the objective measure of good health is higher among longerterm (42%) compared to short-term patients (27%). For subjective health, short-lived pleasures are predictors among short-term adherents while economic characteristics are determinants among longer-term patients. Meanwhile, objective health is associated with factors that determine ART adherence (i.e. participating in self-help groups). To achieve a wholistic resilience management that caters to the needs of PLHIV, we need to acknowledge adaptation to the disease and to ART and design health programs, in particular in developing countries, away from one-size-fits-all solutions to stage-of-disease specific support.
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