Assessing pharmacy students' HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) prescribing knowledge, PrEP attitudes, and HIV-related stigma.

INTRODUCTION

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) significantly reduces the risk of acquiring HIV. To increase PrEP prescribing, it is crucial to evaluate the preparedness of future pharmacists who will play a pivotal role in providing PrEP education, counseling, and prescribing.

OBJECTIVE

We assessed PrEP-prescribing knowledge, attitudes, and HIV-related stigma of pharmacy students.

METHODS

We conducted a cross-sectional web-based survey of student pharmacists in their final two years of education and training at the three University of California pharmacy schools. Survey questions assessed students' awareness of PrEP, familiarity with prescribing guidelines and Senate Bill 159 (SB159), PrEP knowledge, HIV-related stigma, and attitudes about PrEP. The sample was characterized using descriptive statistics, and non-parametric tests were used to examine associations between dependent variables and independent variables. A p-value <0.05 was deemed statistically significant.

RESULTS

A total of 110 students participated in the survey. The greatest familiarity with guidelines was observed in male (77.4%) (p = 0.047) and gay-identifying (100%) (p = 0.039) students compared with other genders and sexual identities, respectively. Non-advanced pharmacy practice experience (APPE) students (70.3%) displayed significantly more familiarity with SB159 than APPE students (65.2%) (p = 0.006). Non-APPE students displayed higher HIV-related stigma compared with APPE students (13.8 vs. 9.4, p = 0.0015). Significant differences in PrEP knowledge (p = 0.0105), HIV-related stigma (p = 0.0003), and PrEP attitudes (p = 0.0098) were observed between the schools. African American students had a significantly higher mean PrEP attitudes score (mean = 51.0, standard deviation [SD] = 3.6) compared with other racial categories (p = 0.0329).

CONCLUSION

Elevated HIV-related stigma, in the presence of high levels of PrEP knowledge, highlights the need to focus on destigmatizing HIV prevention services and increasing anti-stigma training, which is imperative in preparing student pharmacists to prescribe PrEP.