Persuasive Health Communication Intervention for HIV/HCV

As part of routine practice at Mount Sinai Health System EDs, the ED Nurses initiate HIV/HCV screening for all patients able to provide consent. ED patients eligible for recruitment into the RCT portion of the study are those who declined HIV/HCV screening. RCs will review the electronic health records (EHRs) of patients present in the ED during data collection periods and determine which patients are potentially eligible.

Participation in the RCT involves a one-time encounter. All research-related activities will occur in the ED. As such, drop-out during this brief RCT (<30 minutes from recruitment through final study questionnaires) is expected to be minimal (<5%). RCs will coordinate with participants and ED staff to facilitate participant involvement while they are receiving medical care. If necessary, participants can continue participating in designated areas of the ED (e.g., waiting room, family room) after they are discharged and there are study-related tasks remaining. There are no research related follow-ups needed.

The research team will enroll a total of 2,000 adult ED patients who meet all study criteria and agree to participate in the RCT, stratified by IDU history. Assuming 0.6 participants completing the study/hour (1 study completion/75 minutes of recruitment, enrollment, and data collection), the research team could recruit up to ≈5,184 participants (720 collection days x 12 hours/data collection/day x 0.6 participants/hour) over 3 years.

The research team will be collecting data using the QDS™ (NOVA Research Company) program installed on a tablet computer. The program has the ability to encrypt collected data, to which only the researcher has ability to de-crypt data sets (NOVA Research cannot recover lost passwords for the researcher). The program also has a data management system, allowing data export for use in analytical packages like SPSS, Stata. Internet access is not necessary for this program to function. The data can be stored on the tablet computer for the meantime, then synced once internet is available.

Inclusion criteria

• ≥18 years-old
• Speak English or Spanish, and able to provide informed consent for study participation
• Not HIV AND HCV infected/Antibody+ (per EHR review and patient report)
• Not already participating in a HIV or HCV study (e.g., HIV PrEP, HIV vaccine)
• Not tested for HIV OR HCV within the past 12 months (per EHR review and patient report)

Exclusion criteria

• <18 years old
• Unable to speak Spanish or English
• HIV or HCV positive
• Currently enrolled in another HIV or HCV research study
• Has tested for HIV or HCV in the past 12 months