HIV Health Literacy clinical trials

Facilitating HIV/AIDS and HIV Testing Literacy for Emergency Department Patients

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that all patients should receive information about HIV/AIDS and HIV testing orally or in writing at every HIV testing encounter. However, for busy emergency departments (EDs), delivering information orally is a barrier to HIV testing, and written brochures likely are not useful for those with lower health or general literacy. Videos might be as or more efficacious than orally-delivered information in improving HIV/AIDS and HIV testing knowledge, particularly for those with lower health literacy skills. However, the resources required to show videos might limit their use in EDs. Pictorial brochures are a promising alternative, but are of unknown efficacy. The objectives of this study are to: (1) determine if HIV/AIDS and HIV testing information should be delivered by a video or pictorial brochure to emergency department (ED) patients to improve short-term (in the ED) knowledge about HIV/AIDS and HIV testing; (2) determine if longer-term retention (over 12 months) of HIV/AIDS and HIV testing knowledge is greater for those who watch a video or review a pictorial brochure; (3) determine if short-term improvement and longer-term retention in HIV/AIDS and HIV testing knowledge is better after watching a video or reviewing a pictorial brochure for those with lower health literacy, and if improvement and retention also varies by language spoken (English or Spanish); and (4) if willingness to be tested again in one year is greater for those who watch the video or review the pictorial brochure, and if this willingness also varies by health literacy level and language spoken.