Brief communication: qualitative evaluation of call-for-life mHealth tool among youth living with HIV in Uganda.

INTRODUCTION

Afew studies have assessed the acceptability of mHealth interventions in youth living with HIV, Call For Life -Interactive Voice Response (C4L-IVR) system developed to support patients with HIV and TB in Uganda, specifically to improve treatment adherence and retention in care. This qualitative study examined the acceptability and usage of C4L-IVR, barriers and enablers of adherence and retention in care among youth living with HIV in rural Uganda.

METHODS

Nested within a randomised intervention trial (NCT04718974), this qualitative study examined youth 16-24 years old, through focus group discussions and indepth interviews at study end. Induction and deduction analysis was done with support of Nvivo software guided by the information motivation behavioral theory.

RESULTS

Between 9th December 2021 and 28th Apr 2022, 68 participants were recruited, with 38 (56%) females. We conducted 14 interviews 7 focused group discussions (FGD) (02 female only FGD; 5 mixed); and 7 in-depth interviews (IDI) (4 males and 3 females IDI. Seven main themes were identified: information received from the system, motivation from system calls, behavioural skills, barriers to adherence and retention, acceptability of the tool, experiences, and suggestions for improvement. All youth accepted the tool, scoring it highly comfortable on a 5 Likert scale, where 5 was "very comfortable" and 1 "not at all comfortable'.

CONCLUSION

The high acceptability and usage of C4L system along with impact on behavioral skills, this system had more enablers than barriers to ART adherence and retention in care.