Will an Unsupervised Self-Testing Strategy Be Feasible to Operationalize in Canada? Results from a Pilot Study in Students of a Large Canadian University

Background. A convenient, private, and accessible HIV self-testing strategy stands to complement facility-based conventional testing. Over-the-counter oral HIV self-tests are approved and available in the United States, but not yet in Canada. Canadian data on self-testing is nonexistent. We investigated the feasibility of offering an unsupervised self-testing strategy to Canadian students. Methods. Between September 2011 and May 2012, we recruited 145 students from a student health clinic of a large Canadian university. Feasibility of operationalization (i.e., self-test conduct, acceptability, convenience, and willingness to pay) was evaluated. Self-test conduct was computed with agreement between the self-test performed by the student and the test repeated by a healthcare professional. Other metrics were measured on a survey. Results. Participants were young (median age: 22 years), unmarried (97%), and 47% were out of province or international students. Approximately 52% self-reported a history of unprotected casual sex and sex with multiple partners. Self-test conduct agreement was high (100%), so were acceptability (81%), convenience (99%), and willingness to pay (74%) for self-tests. Concerns included accuracy of self-tests and availability of expedited linkages. Conclusion. An unsupervised self-testing strategy was found to be feasible in Canadian students. Findings call for studies in at-risk populations to inform Canadian policy.

• Publication year

  2014

• Venue

  AIDS Research and Treatment

• Publication date

  2014-01-09

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1155/2014/747619PMID 24511392PMCID 3912878
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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