Onboarding Positives and PrEP Users to Engage Negatives (OPPEN): Peer-driven Education to Link YMSM of Color to PrEP

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) uptake has been slow among young men who have sex with men (YMSM), particularly those of color who experience a high rate of new HIV infections in the United States. Limited PrEP knowledge, unfamiliarity with how to access PrEP, medical mistrust, and stigma are barriers to PrEP care engagement among YMSM, including those of color. Peer-driven social network interventions that train individuals as peer educators to disseminate information about HIV prevention and treatment within their social networks have been implemented to address similar barriers and improve HIV outcomes within hard to reach populations. YMSM of color engaged in HIV/PrEP care often employ resilience processes to overcome socio-structural barriers to HIV prevention and care. As such, training YMSM of color engaged in HIV/PrEP care as peer PrEP educators may position them as credible sources of PrEP information who can influence behavior change (i.e., PrEP care engagement) among YMSM peers of color in their social networks via their ability to disseminate culturally competent PrEP messages in the context of their personal experiences using these resilience processes to navigate the healthcare system, medical mistrust, and stigma. Drawing on existing peer-driven social network interventions, the diffusion of innovations and information-motivation-behavioral skills models, and Harper et al.'s resilience framework, this study will develop and pilot Onboarding Positives and PrEP users to Engage Negatives (OPPEN), a peer-driven PrEP education social network intervention, among YMSM of color in San Diego, California. Through three small-group and two one-on-one sessions, OPPEN will train YMSM of color engaged in HIV/PrEP care to be peer PrEP educators within their social networks. In Phase I, OPPEN was developed, pretested, and refined using an iterative process that integrated feedback elicited from YMSM of color living with HIV and YMSM using PrEP trained via OPPEN as well as HIV-negative YMSM who could benefit from PrEP (AIM 1). In Phase II, OPPEN will be piloted in a randomized controlled trial with 70 YMSM of color engaged in HIV/PrEP care (i.e., indexes; up to two-thirds engaged in PrEP care) randomly assigned to OPPEN (n=35) or a time- and attention-matched control condition (n=35). All indexes will receive coupons to recruit YMSM peers of color within their social networks to the study. Assuming ~2 peers will be recruited per index, ~140 peers will present at the study site (i.e., peer-recruits) and undergo HIV testing. HIV-negative peer-recruits interested in PrEP will be scheduled for a PrEP clinic visit. Data collected via surveys (baseline and 3-month study visits) and medical records will be used to evaluate the preliminary effect of OPPEN on PrEP interest, linkage, and uptake among peer-recruits (AIM 2) and theory-based mechanisms targeted by OPPEN among indexes and peer-recruits (AIM 3). OPPEN acceptability and feasibility will be evaluated using a mixed-methods approach (AIM 4).