Mandy Hill, DrPH, MPH

Leveraging video logs to support HIV PrEP access to Black women in Harris County

Mandy Hill, Sarah Sapp, Sandra Coker, Tristen Sutton, Diane Santa Maria

UTHealth Houston, Houston, TX
Tristen Sutton Consulting, Houston, TX

Cisgender Black women (CBW) account for 2% of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)-eligible people in the United States who use PrEP to prevent HIV. In correlation with low PrEP use, CBW continue to contract HIV more than women from every other racial group. Intervention efforts that can bridge the link between knowing that PrEP prevents HIV and support with access to PrEP are necessary for CBW.

The team formerly piloted full-length vlogs (10-12 minutes each) with 26 women during an emergency department visit. In a prospective 6-month social media marketing campaign, the study team led a Texas-Development CFAR (TX-DCFAR) pilot grant to disseminate brief vlog snippets (30 seconds) of excerpts from the full-length vlogs with a larger group of Black women in Harris County. The purpose of the vlogs through the campaign was to share information about ways to prevent HIV using PrEP and fact-based education, and provide access to PrEP resources with active links to local PrEP providers at local community health centers. Community members, who were aged 18 -55 years, usually consume content that is often viewed by CBW (i.e. health/beauty), and reside in neighborhoods (based on zip code) in Harris County where most residents are Black or African American, were shown a series of brief vlog snippets on their social media pages, along with a brief message about PrEP and an active hyperlink to local PrEP resources.

Within 6 months, the campaign reach 110.8K unique individuals who identify as women. Key performance indicators showed 1,098,629 impressions, 1,002,244 total video plays, and resulted in 15,952 link clicks to local PrEP resources. Findings were stratified by age, illustrating that video plays at 50% of the vlogs (n=30,877) were most common among women ages 18-24 years (n=12,017) and least common among women ages 45-54 years (n=658).

The campaign illustrated preliminary effectiveness at supporting access to local PrEP resources with CBW. Further research is necessary to assess whether vlog viewership and clicks on links to PrEP resources can meaningfully empower CBW to access to PrEP and/or help them to assess whether PrEP is a useful HIV prevention option.