Work

Designing For Choice In HIV Prevention: Translating Multi-Stakeholder Evidence Into A Patient-Facing mHealth Ecosystem For Prep

Year: 2026

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: Despite the rapid expansion of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) options—including daily oral, event-driven, and long-acting injectable regimens, uptake and persistence remain suboptimal. Increasingly, the central challenge is not availability but decision-making: selecting and sustaining a modality introduces complex interactional demands including regimen comprehension, temporal coordination with behaviors, patient-provider communication, clinical workflow integration, and insurance coverage. Drawing on focus groups with young men who have sex with men, cognitive interviews refining educational content, and usability evaluation of an adherence and sexual health tracking tool, this paper translates multi-stakeholder evidence into a patient-facing mHealth ecosystem that integrates comprehension support, cognitive offloading, user control and error recovery, stigma-sensitive communication, and clinical workflow alignment: the mChoice tool. We articulate a set of reusable interaction principles and system-level design requirements for supporting HIV prevention for patients. Considerations include relational and communication barriers in clinical encounters, cognitive and temporal complexity of PrEP regimens, and comprehension and navigation in prevention decision-making. Preliminary findings from the mChoice study such as high retention rates, and usability scores from the Health Information Technology Usability Evaluation and the Post Study System Usability Questionnaire demonstrate early signals of feasibility. The formative findings support the plausibility of an interaction-centered approach to PrEP modality choice and justify progression to longitudinal evaluation within real-world care settings.

Source: ACM Interactive Health Conference

DOI: 10.1145/3786579.3804959