Weekly Lit Review: Refining a personalized mHealth intervention to promote medication adherence among HIV+ methamphetamine users [2014]

Welcome to the BATLab’s Weekly Lit Review, where every week we post peer-reviewed papers relevant to our research projects.

This week, take a look at this interesting paper published in AIDS Care in 2014:

Refining a personalized mHealth intervention to promote medication adherence among HIV+ methamphetamine users

Key words: focus groups; methamphetamine; antiretroviral treatment; adherence; mHealth; short message service

Abstract

Purpose

Mobile health (mHealth) interventions to promote antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence have shown promise; however, among persons living with HIV who abuse methamphetamine (MA), effective tailoring of content to match the expressed needs of this patient population may be necessary. This study aimed (1) to understand patient perspectives of barriers and facilitators of ART adherence among people with HIV who use MA, and (2) to obtain feedback on the thematic content of an mHealth intervention in order to tailor the intervention to this subgroup.

Methods

Two separate focus groups, each with 10 HIV+/MA+ individuals, were conducted. Transcribed audio recordings were qualitatively analyzed to identify emergent themes.

Results

Inter-rater reliability of themes was high (mean Kappa = .97). Adherence barriers included MA use, misguided beliefs about ART adherence, memory and planning difficulties, social barriers and perceived stigma, and mental heath issues. Facilitators of effective ART adherence were cognitive compensatory strategies, promotion of well-being, health-care supports, adherence education, and social support. Additionally, the focus groups generated content for reminder text messages to be used in the medication adherence intervention.

Conclusions

This qualitative study demonstrates the feasibility of using focus groups to derive patient-centered intervention content to address the health challenge at hand in targeted populations.

This article was written by:

Jessica L. Montoya
Shereen Georges
Amelia Poquette
Colin A. Depp
J. Hampton Atkinson
David J. Moore
and the Translational Methamphetamine AIDS Research Center (TMARC) Group

Contributors are from:

SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, San Diego, CA, USA;
Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA;
VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, CA, USA