Identifying and Addressing Delivery Considerations and Best Practices

Clinical guidelines are directions for health-care practitioners to provide PrEP. These guidelines are succinct recommendations that detail the testing, counseling, and other clinical steps required for PrEP use in each country.

• WHO Consolidated Guidelines on the Use of Antiretroviral Drugs for Treating and Preventing HIV Infection (June 2016)
• Guidance for Providing Informed-choice Counseling on Sexual Health for Women Interested in Pre-exposure Prophylaxis – FHI 360, Impact Research and Development Organization, Setshaba Research Centre (2015)

• Oral PrEP Training Materials for Providers
  Health care workers need adequate training on how to enroll PrEP users, considerations for delivery, adherence and issues surrounding stigma. Training tools reinforce core messages such as who should be offered PrEP and how to counsel potential users. Click here for oral PrEP training materials for providers

• Dapivirine Vaginal Ring Training Materials for Providers
  Health Care Provider Training for New HIV Prevention Products: This presentation was developed to inform the development of training curricula for new biomedical HIV prevention products. It provides summary insights from an analysis of provider training systems in Kenya, South Africa, and Zimbabwe developed for introduction of the dapivirine vaginal ring in 2020 – 2021.

• Guide to Providing PrEP
  
  Calling all healthcare providers! This video is for you, as we outline some top tips and guidance on prescribing PrEP. We want to empower you with the information you need about PrEP, inform you on how best to counsel your client on what’s right for them, and support them in a non-judgmental manner.
  
  This is one of many videos from JSI’s USAID DISCOVER-Health Project. For more videos and related tools, visit here.

Through interactive activities, discussion and action planning, these trainings prepare ambassadors to share information and support their communities in the uptake of PrEP. These trainings are available for adolescent girls and young women and the general population—including pregnant and breastfeeding women and the LGBTQ+ community—and can be implemented by community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations, ministries of health, PrEP implementers and more. Resources include downloadable paper-based training packages as well as virtual trainings for both ambassadors and trainers of ambassadors. Trained HIV Prevention Ambassadors can also implement the trainings—or selected portions of it—with their peers. Click here to learn more.

• This Facility Readiness Assessment can be used to assess the readiness of healthcare facilities to deliver oral PrEP and identify areas that may require additional investment/
• This South Africa PrEP Facility Assessment Tool can be used as a reference material for national governments and implementers looking to select oral PrEP delivery sites based on readiness and should be adapted to fit local needs and context. It helps determine site readiness based on a number of factors including services provided, data management systems and healthcare worker capacity (e.g., ART-trained nurses).

• Oral PrEP Risk Assessment Tools
• Oral PrEP Risk Assessment Tools At-A-Glance
• Risk Assessment Tools and the Identification of Individuals at HighRisk of HIV infection in the Delivery of Oral PrEP

Significant resources have created strong ‘test and treat’ programs globally. What about those who test negative? How can we ensure that they are given the best preventive tools to maintain their negative status? The OPTIONS Consortium envisions equally strong ‘test and prevent’ programs that link negative individuals to preventive programs in ways that work for them.

In 2020, a Test-And-Prevent Analysis was completed where FSG identified practices for linking individuals from HIV testing to HIV prevention. This work aims to identify interventions that are effective, enabling conditions that support linkage and remaining questions. Read more in the full report and the manuscript published in Global Health: Science and Practice.

Health providers are the gate-keepers for PrEP—and for many other health interventions. It’s essential to invest in research on the knowledge, attitudes, behavior and practices (KAPB) of providers to understand how to select and train effective, well-prepared PrEP providers. This information may be available or may be gathered via a KABP survey and can be used to design training programs tailored to the specific needs and issues raised by providers.

• KAPB Literature Review and Analysis
• KAP Literature and Survey Analysis
• KAP Literature Review and Current Studies
• OPTIONS General KAP Quantitative Survey Template
• Health Care Workers’ Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Related to Oral PrEP Provision to Adolescent Girls and Young Women in Zimbabwe [Poster]
• Understanding Service Providers’ Knowledge of Oral PrEP and Attitudes Toward Provision to Populations at Substantial HIV Risk in South Africa [Poster]