HOPE Social Media Intervention for HIV Testing and Studying Social Networks

This study [HOPE: Harnessing Online Peer Education] seeks to determine the efficacy of using online social networks to scale peer community leader models to increase HIV prevention within African-American and Latino men who have sex with men. The peer community leader model, which teaches community popular opinion leaders about how to disseminate behavior changes messages throughout the community, has been proven to increase HIV prevention behaviors. Social media and online communities, such as Facebook, may be a cost-effective platform for scaling these models. Primarily upper middle-class White populations used the Internet in its early years, however, Internet use within African-American and Latino households has recently increased dramatically, especially on social media. People using the Internet may be at the highest risk for contracting HIV and are using novel Internet approaches to find sex partners, such as through social media. This is the first study to examine the effectiveness of the HOPE social media intervention to increase HIV testing among at-risk groups in the United States.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: HIV
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: social media intervention

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 900
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • California
    • Irvine, California, United States, 92697
      • University of California Irvine

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years to 89 years (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• 18 years of age or older
• Male
• Sexually active with another man in the last 12 months
• Willing and capable of understanding and assenting to an online informed consent form
• Has (or willing to create) a social media page.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Does not satisfy inclusion criteria

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Prevention
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: intervention; experimental	Behavioral: social media intervention; social media intervention
Other: control; Other	Behavioral: social media intervention; social media intervention

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Number of Participants Requesting HIV Self-Testing	At home/self HIV testing kits can be requested to be ordered and will be provided to all participants who request it.	5 years

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of California, Irvine
• Collaborators: National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH); University of California, Los Angeles
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Sean Young, University of California, Irvine

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): December 1, 2016
• Primary Completion (Actual): January 31, 2021
• Study Completion (Actual): January 31, 2023

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: February 5, 2016
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 25, 2016
• First Posted (Estimated): October 26, 2016

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): October 29, 2024
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 3, 2024
• Last Verified: October 1, 2024

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: 20205768; 1R01MH106415 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No