Reducing the Intersecting Stigmas of HIV, Violence Victimization, and Mental Health: a Randomized Controlled Pilot Integrating Project YES! Youth Engaging for Success With WHO-Endorsed Mental Health Approaches Among Youth Living With HIV in Ndola, Zambia
Status: Recruiting
Location: See location...
Intervention Type: Behavioral
Study Type: Interventional
Study Phase: Not Applicable
SUMMARY
The proposed study will address the intersecting stigmas of HIV, violence and depression among adolescents and young adults (15-24) living with HIV (AYALHIV) in Zambia. The study will integrate a WHO-endorsed mental health approach into an existing HIV-stigma-reducing intervention, and refine measures of internalized and intersecting stigmas, to create and test the feasibility of Project YES+- a combined youth peer mentoring and lay mental health intervention. This research aims to shift HIV care and treatment for AYALHIV by addressing the multiple internalized and intersecting stigmas that impeded antiretroviral adherence and HIV viral suppression.
Eligibility
Participation Requirements
Sex: All
Minimum Age: 15
Healthy Volunteers: f
View:
⁃ For youth
• Be between ages 15-21
• living within 30-minutes, by personal transportation, of the clinic by self-report,
• and being available to attend sessions and data collection over a 4-8 month time period On ART for at least 6 months
• On first-line ART
• Speaks Bemba
⁃ For caregivers
• Being 25 years of age or older
• Caring for an AYALHIV who meets the study eligibility criteria
• Speaks Bemba
• Living within 30-minutes, by personal transportation, of the clinic by self-report
• Being available to attend sessions and data collection over a 4-8 month time period
Locations
Other Locations
Zambia
Arthur Davison Children's Hospital
RECRUITING
Ndola
Contact Information
Primary
Julie A Denison, PhD
jdenison@jhu.edu
13012838643
Backup
Kayayi Chibesa, MPH
kayayir@gmail.com
+260 96 2224671
Time Frame
Start Date:2025-10-25
Estimated Completion Date:2026-06-30
Participants
Target number of participants:400
Treatments
No_intervention: Standard of Care
The comparison group will receive the standard of care. Standard of care at ADCH includes an optional monthly AYALHIV youth group. The comparison arm participants will also be offered referrals to health care providers if they screen positive for depression or have experienced severe forms of violence (a process the investigators utilized and refined during the Project YES! study).
Experimental: Project YES+ intervention arm
Project YES+ will be about 4 months and will consist of an orientation meeting with the youth client, their caregiver, the healthcare worker and the youth peer mentor to introduce the intervention. Youth clients will then meet with their YPM individually and in groups with other youth living with HIV in the intervention, and go through the WHO- Self Help plus group meetings. Caregivers will also attend three different caregiver group meetings. At the end, there will be a transition group meeting with youth and caregivers together, followed by one last individual mentoring meeting with the youth. All individual and group meetings are facilitated by the youth peer mentor. Study team members will provide reminder calls for youth and their caregivers before intervention meetings and data collection points.
Collaborators: Fogarty International Center of the National Institute of Health, Arthur Davison Children's Hospital, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
Leads: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health