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The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded Assistant Professor Phil Kreniske a $3,598,164 R01 grant to lead a project to develop and evaluate brief video interventions designed to reduce HIV stigma and improve engagement in HIV prevention, care, and mental health treatment among young sexually minoritized men.
The project, Social Contact-Based Brief Video Interventions To Reduce Stigma and ImproVe Engagement in HIV Prevention and Care and Mental Health Care for Youth Living with and Vulnerable to HIV (STRIVE), will test the effectiveness and implementation of the videos. The videos will be co-designed through community feedback sessions involving the research team and a youth advisory board of people with lived experience related to HIV prevention and care and mental health. They will be designed to be emotionally engaging and geared toward youth living with or vulnerable to HIV.
Through these brief interventions, the researchers hope to promote access to health services and prevent poor health outcomes, including HIV transmission-related behaviors, by reducing stigma.
The research team, which will be co-led by Columbia University Associate Professor Doron Amsalem, will gauge how well the videos work in real-world settings by gathering feedback from participants, partners, and staff to understand what makes the program easy or hard to use, what helps or gets in the way, and how to improve it for wider rollout. They will then evaluate engagement and treatment-seeking behavior from New York–area dissemination of evidence-based videos via Instagram.
“Social media and related technology are everywhere, and this project creates a possibility that we can use these networks to improve linkage to care for people who have historically been excluded and underserved by traditional systems,” says Dr. Kreniske. “This project will help us identify and address how shame and stigma impact treatment seeking. If we can shift attitudes and reduce shame around HIV, we can help more people get into treatment sooner and stay healthier.”
Dr. Kreniske is an assistant professor in the department of Community Health and Social Sciences and affiliated with the CUNY Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health (ISPH) at CUNY SPH.
