Dr. Donaldson Conserve and colleagues have been awarded a 2023 NIH CFAR Ending the Epidemic Supplement Award to design and pilot a pharmacy-based PrEP delivery model for Black Adults in Washington, DC.
His team at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, and colleagues at Population Council, and Us Helping Us) propose to use Intervention Mapping (IM), a multistep theory-based intervention development process, to develop and pilot a pharmPrEP service delivery model. UHU has been providing free community-based HIV testing, treatment, and prevention services for nearly three decades in the DC area, particularly among Black residents. UHU is building an onsite pharmacy to complement its current HIV services (completion date: November 2023). UHU also has an agreement with Safeway, a chain supermarket with retail pharmacies, to provide HIV testing within its Wellness Clinic (using UHU’s community health workers [CHWs]) at multiple DC locations. They propose to develop a service delivery model that builds on these two types of pharmacybased approaches (community-based pharmacy and retail pharmacy) by using the 6-step IM process (e.g., needs assessment, theory-based methods and practical strategies, produce intervention components and materials, design implementation and evaluation plan).
The Specific Aims are: Aim 1: Develop a pharmPrEP service delivery model for residents, particularly Black residents, in the DC area. As part of the IM process, they will conduct a formative assessment with pharmacists/technicians, PrEP providers, current PrEP users, and other stakeholders (e.g., DC Health, DC Board of Pharmacy, pharmPrEP experts) using the CFIR to guide our understanding barriers/facilitators for pharmPrEP. They will then produce standard operating procedures for the pilot intervention. They will develop a service delivery model that will deliver PrEP through the UHU community pharmacy and the retail pharmacy. Aim 2: Pilot and assess the acceptability/feasibility/appropriateness of the pharmPrEP service delivery model. They will conduct a pilot study with 40 HIV negative PrEP eligible participants. PharmPrEP participants will complete the initial PrEP initiation visit, receive PrEP from the pharmacist, and complete a 1-month follow-up visit. Quantitative behavioral surveys will be conducted with all participants at baseline and 45 days after. Qualitative interviews with participating pharmacy staff (N=12), and PrEP initiators (N=12) to obtain feedback on their experience providing and accessing pharmPrEP.