Men’s Willingness to Receive Text Messages and Talk with an HIV counselor from the National HIV Hotline in Tanzania for Support with Linkage to Care Following HIV self-testing

Abstract

BackgroundTanzania faces a significant burden of HIV, with particular challenges in reaching men and ensuring timely linkage to care. To address these issues, HIV self-testing (HIVST) has been implemented to increase HIV testing and the National HIV Hotlines are being considered as a strategy to facilitate linkage to care. This study aimed to assess the willingness of Tanzanian men to receive support from use the National HIV Hotline via mobile phones for HIVST and linkage to care.MethodsData from 505 men from the baseline survey of a cluster-randomized controlled trial conducted in June 2019 with 18 social networks or “camps” in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Participants were 18-year-old or older male camp members who were HIV-negative at the time of enrolment. Logistic regression models were used to assess factors associated with men’s comfort with talking with an HIV counselor over the phone.ResultsThere were 505 heterosexual male participants enrolled in the study with an average age of 29 years. Logistic regression demonstrated that comfortability texting a friend about HIV self-testing (OR =3.37, 95% CI [1.97 – 5.76], being comfortable texting a friend about HIV (OR = 3.84, 95% CI [2.20 – 6.72], previous history of receiving HIV related text messages (aOR = 0.55, 95% CI [0.31 – 0.99] were significantly associated with men’s s comfortability talking to a HIV counselor on the National HIV Hotline following HIVST. The factors such as participants’ comfortability texting friend about HIVST (OR = 2.52, 95% CI [1.49 – 4.25]) and comfortability texting friend about HIV (OR = 2.96, 95% CI [1.83 – 4.80] were significantly associated with the probability of participant’s comfortability receiving text message from HIV counselor following HIVST.ConclusionThese findings suggest an effort to develop and implement a user-friendly digital health intervention that promote comfortability, address private concerns, and deliver tailored support and information to individuals following HIV self-testing.