HealthCall: Brief Intervention to Reduce Drug Use in HIV Primary Care

Participants will engage in a 30-minute Motivational Interviewing session with the study counselor to discuss participant's drug and alcohol use, its implications for their health, and the possibility of drug and alcohol use reduction. This counseling session is intended to help people reduce their drug and alcohol use if they wish. In the counseling session, participants describe the pros and cons of their drug and alcohol use and whether it might be important to quit using drugs and drinking alcohol. Open discussion of the pros (what they like about drug use and drinking) and cons (what they don't like) can help people think about reducing drug and alcohol use in a more complete way than they might have before. This arm will be compared to the HealthCall+Motivational Interviewing arm.

The HealthCall+Motivational Interviewing arm will investigate whether the addition of HealthCall, a smartphone application designed to keep track of the participant's drug and alcohol use and other health-related behaviors through short daily use, will help participants reduce their substance use more than Motivational Interviewing alone. Participants will receive the same 30-minute Motivational Interviewing session as described in the MI arm. After the session, participants will be introduced to HealthCall and will be asked to use the app daily over the next 30 days. Each use lasts 2-3 minutes and can be done anywhere on the phone in the U.S. The purpose of daily HealthCall use is to help participants keep track of their drug and alcohol use.