Policy and practice suggestions to improve performance on the UNAIDS 90‐90‐90 targets: Results from a nominal group technique with HIV experts in Southwest Ethiopia

Abstract

Objective This paper aims to evaluate the potential solutions to address negative outcomes of HIV care and treatment, that were proposed by HIV care providers, researchers and HIV programme managers in Southwest Ethiopia. Methods A nominal group technique (NGT) was conducted with 25 experts in December 2017 in Jimma, Southwest Ethiopia. The NGT process included (a) an analysis of the previously qualitative study conducted with various Ethiopian HIV stakeholders who proposed possible solutions for HIV care and treatment; (b) recruitment of a panel of HIV experts in policy and practice to rate the proposed solutions in Ethiopia before a discussion (first round rating); (c) discussion with the panel of experts on the suggested solutions; and (d) conducting a second round of rating of proposed solutions. Content analysis and Wilcoxon signed rank test were applied to analyse the data. Results Eighteen of the 25 invited panel of experts participated in the NGT. The following proposed solutions were rated and discussed as relevant, feasible and acceptable. In order of decreasing importance, the solutions were as follows: filling gaps in legislation, HIV self‐testing, the teach‐test‐link‐trace strategy, house‐to‐house HIV testing, community antiretroviral therapy (ART) groups, providing ART in private clinics and providing ART at health posts. Conclusions The current study findings suggested that, to address HIV negative outcomes, priority solutions could include mandatory notification of partner's HIV status, HIV self‐testing and the involvement of peer educators on the entire HIV care programme.

Perilous medicine in Tigray: a systematic review

“…We found no original article focusing on the rebuilding of the healthcare system of Tigray. We call that prioritized research agenda should also be identified using standard consensus studies, such as Delphi Technique [ 61 ] or other approaches. No document assessed the impact on the population and community health using population- or community-based surveys.…”

Perceptions of Global Health Engagements in Relation to the COVID-19 Pandemic Among Health Care Workers and Administrators in Western Kenya: Protocol for a Multistage Qualitative Study

“…Primarily, NGTs offer a high level of efficiency in achieving group consensus in comparison to focus groups, which can be significantly impacted by group dynamics, dominant personalities, and biases of participants and researchers [38]. Equally important in the selection of NGTs is their proven use in research in health care research, including among individuals working in health care in the African context [39][40][41][42][43]. In our study, NGTs will be used to generate a prioritized list of recommendations among health care workers and administrators, which will be examined further in subsequent in-depth interviews.…”

“…Additionally, NGTs are noted for their usability and outputs, typically prioritized lists of actions, and can be a useful method to compare viewpoints and priorities of stakeholder groups [39]. NGT methods have also been shown to reduce researcher bias and have been applied frequently in health research, particularly among health care workers-including in sub-Saharan Africa [39][40][41][42][43]54].…”