Ongoing Dynamic Choice to Address HIV Treatment Interruption in Malawi
Ongoing Dynamic Choice to Address HIV Treatment Interruption in Malawi (CHOICE)
University of California, Los Angeles
800 participants
Nov 17, 2025
INTERVENTIONAL
Conditions
Summary
Repeat and prolonged treatment interruption (TI) is common and the major threat to HIV epidemic control in eastern and southern Africa. The proposed project will test an innovative long-term dynamic choice intervention for ART clients experiencing TI in Malawi. Findings will provide essential information on how to improve sustained retention among TI client, a critical step to curbing the HIV epidemic. TI clients need long-term, responsive interventions. There are no one-size fits all intervention to support long-term care for TI clients because clients experience vastly different and changing barriers to care. While health facilities do have limited capacity for adding new services, existing services can be packaged differently to meet clients' needs. Long-term, dynamic choice of services is one way to provide responsive services and promotes client ownership over care. The investigators propose to give TI clients long-term, dynamic choice of what services they receive and how they receive it (drawing from key building blocks of DSD). Long-term, dynamic choice puts clients in the driver's seat and may be the best practical strategy to provide long-term and responsive TI interventions that are tailored to clients' evolving life circumstances. Dynamic choice is frequently used for HIV prevention and family planning products, whereby clients select the type of health product that works best for them (i.e., condoms, injectables, etc.). Choice of these services is strongly associated with improved outcomes. The goal of this clinical trial is to determine if CHOICE can improve outcomes in TI clients, compared to standard of care (SOC). Participants will be randomly assigned to either the CHOICE or SOC group, and follow them for 12 months. The primary outcome will be viral suppression at 12 months.
Eligibility
Inclusion Criteria5
- years of age or older
- living with HIV;
- initiated ART for the first time\>3-months ago (i.e., not a new initiate);
- non-pregnant;
- experienced Treatment Interuptions during their most recent ARTappointment (\>28 days late).
Exclusion Criteria1
- pregnant women because the ART/antenatal care (ANC) programs are integrated and require additional considerations and linkages with antenatal services.
Interventions
Routine HIV counselors will provide person-centered counseling and guide clients through a facilitated choice process to select DSDs and other support services routinely available to participating facilities. ART providers will review client preferences alongside client clinical assessments, resulting in a shared decision making of what DSD and support services is clinical safe and preferred for the client. Clients can change their preferred choice at any point throughout study enrollment. Ongoing, dynamic choice of available DSD models is a feasible and likely safe way to optimize the benefits of choice and provide responsive services for TI clients.
Locations(1)
View Full Details on ClinicalTrials.gov
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NCT07220278