ART Adherence

Men who are living with HIV and use stimulants face many challenges and barriers that may interfere with remembering to take their HIV medication. Forgetting to take HIV medication puts men living with HIV at a greater risk of becoming virally unsuppressed. Researchers are doing this study to test if a remote intervention can help participants improve remembering to take their HIV medications and reduce the HIV viral load among men living with HIV who use stimulants.

The goal of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of stepped care strategies to improve ART adherence among adult Latino men with HIV using a sequential, multiple assignment, randomized trial (SMART). The trial will compare a stepped care strategy of delivering TXTXT ("Treatment Text") first and stepping up to remote patient navigation for non-responders vs. a stepped care strategy of delivering TXTXT + e-Navigation first and stepping up to EMA-supported e-Navigation for non-responders. Both TXTXT and the foundations of the e-Navigation interventions are CDC evidence-based interventions (EBI). We propose to use a SMART design which explicitly allows building, testing, and optimizing stepped care strategies without compromising rigor or randomization. We propose three specific aims: Aim 1. Compare the immediate (6-month) and sustained (9- and 12-month) efficacy of two static (non-stepped) treatment regimens (TXTXT alone vs. TXTXT + e-Navigation) on ART adherence and viral suppression among Latino men with HIV. Hypothesis 1a. TXTXT + e-Navigation will be more efficacious than TXTXT alone. Aim 2. Compare the immediate (6-month) and sustained (9- and 12-month) efficacy of two stepped care strategies (TXTXT with added e-Navigation for non-responders vs. TXTXT + e-Navigation with added EMA support for non-responders) on ART adherence and viral suppression among Latino men with HIV. Hypothesis 2a: TXTXT + e-Navigation with added EMA support for non-responders at the 3-month follow-up will be more efficacious than TXTXT with added e-Navigation for non-responders at the 3-month follow-up. Aim 3. Identify baseline and time-varying moderators on the association between stepped care strategy and ART adherence and viral suppression among Latino men with HIV. Hypotheses 3a-c: TXTXT with added e-Navigation for non-responders will be less efficacious than TXTXT + e-Navigation with added EMA support for non-responders for individuals who are: (a) older at baseline, or report (b) substance use, or (c) symptoms of depression between baseline and the 3-month follow-up.

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has significantly decreased the morbidity and mortality of HIV infection. However, adherence challenges in taking daily oral ART persist. A retrospective cohort study across 31 countries from 2010-19 reported that only 65% of people with HIV (PWH) on ART exhibited virologic suppression (VS) three years after starting ART;1 the rate of VS in South Africa among PWH on ART is 60-65%. Adherence barriers span individual and structural factors, such as stigma, recall difficulties, housing and/or food insecurity, mental illness, substance use, transportation, stock-outs, and other factors that vary by country and population. Adherence interventions can benefit from direct objective adherence monitoring. Pharmacologic metrics of adherence assess drug levels in plasma, dried blood spots, hair (a metric our group pioneered) or urine and predict outcomes more accurately than self-reported adherence. However, most of these metrics preclude real-time assessment, requiring expensive laboratory equipment and trained laboratory personnel. Thus, few adherence interventions have successfully incorporated objective metrics, likely due to laboratory and shipping delays. A low-cost (\<$2/test) point-of-care adherence metric - developed by our group - should allow for real-time biofeedback and improve the impact of metric-driven adherence interventions.