Reducing Post-Hospital Mortality in HIV-infected Adults in Tanzania

The number of participants who die in the first 12 months post-hospitalization will be recorded. Death will be determined by phone calls to relatives and will be confirmed by verbal autopsies, obituaries, hospital records, or death certificates.

HIV clinic attendance will be monitored by review of HIV clinic records. HIV clinic attendance is defined as alive and attended clinic within a window of 90 days (+/- 45 days) around the time points.

ART adherence will be assessed using the ACTG 4-Day ART Recall Questionnaire. Adherence will be calculated as a percentage, using 1 - (number of missed doses/number of prescribed doses).

Suppressed viral load will be defined as a binary outcome based upon the WHO definition of viral suppression as a plasma HIV-1 RNA level <1000 copies/µl.

Traditional health beliefs will be assessed at baseline and after 12 months using the HIV Insights and Beliefs Scale, scored from 0 to 6, where higher scores indicate more traditional health beliefs. The minimum value is 0 and the maximum value is 6.

Self-efficacy will be assessed at baseline and after 12 months using the HIV Adherence Self-Efficacy Scale, scored from 0 to 25, where higher scores indicate a higher level of self-efficacy.

Stigma will be assessed at baseline and after 12 months using questions based off the AIDS-Related Stigma Scale, scored from 0 to 8, where higher scores indicate a higher level of perceived stigma.

Social support will be assessed at baseline and after 12 months using the SPS-10 Scale, scored from 0 to 40, where higher scores indicate a higher level of social support.

Perceived need for HIV services will be assessed at baseline and after 12 months using the ART Medications Attitude Scale, scored from 0 to 4, where higher scores indicate a lower perceived need for HIV services.

Physical weakness will be assessed at baseline and after 12 months using the SF-12 Health Survey. The SF-12 measures physical health (physical component score (PCS)), scored from 0 to 100, and mental health (mental component score (MCS)), scored from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating greater physical and mental health.

Qualitative interviews will be conducted with a sub-set of participants to evaluate the acceptability of the intervention. The acceptability of the Daraja intervention was defined as a binary outcome based on the results of the qualitative interviews. The sub-set will be comprised of 20 intervention participants, 20 routine care control participants, and 20 health care workers (nurses and physicians). Health care workers were not enrolled as participants in the trial nor randomized to a study arm.

A microcosting analysis was conducted to identify the resources needed to implement and sustain the Daraja intervention and estimate the associated costs. Resource identification was accomplished primarily through in-person site visits and semi-structured interviews with relevant personnel. Nationally representative unit costs were assigned to the relevant resources. Resources were categorized as fixed start-up, time-dependent, or variable, and contextualized as being required for implementation or sustainment. The intervention implementation period was defined as the first 12 months following start-up, and consisted of the resources in all 3 of the aforementioned categories, and the sustainment period is intended to reflect a typical year following the implementation period, and consists of time-dependent and variable resources, given that the costs associated with fixed start-up resources become negligible over time. Incremental cost was reported as a number in 2023 USD.

The difference in costs between the arms from the healthcare perspective will be compared to the observed difference in survival between the arms to calculate incremental cost per life saved. Parametric methods based on parameters obtained from bootstrapping will be used to estimate an acceptability curves, which will illustrate the probability that the intervention is a good value for different willingness-to-pay thresholds