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Young people’s perceptions of smartphone-enabled self-testing and online care for sexually transmitted infections: qualitative interview study

BACKGROUND: Control of sexually transmitted infections (STI) is a global public health priority. Despite the UK’s free, confidential sexual health clinical services, those at greatest risk of STIs, including young people, report barriers to use. These include: embarrassment regarding face-to-face co...

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Autores principales: Aicken, Catherine R. H., Fuller, Sebastian S., Sutcliffe, Lorna J., Estcourt, Claudia S., Gkatzidou, Voula, Oakeshott, Pippa, Hone, Kate, Sadiq, S. Tariq, Sonnenberg, Pam, Shahmanesh, Maryam
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5022229/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27624633
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3648-y
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author Aicken, Catherine R. H.
Fuller, Sebastian S.
Sutcliffe, Lorna J.
Estcourt, Claudia S.
Gkatzidou, Voula
Oakeshott, Pippa
Hone, Kate
Sadiq, S. Tariq
Sonnenberg, Pam
Shahmanesh, Maryam
author_facet Aicken, Catherine R. H.
Fuller, Sebastian S.
Sutcliffe, Lorna J.
Estcourt, Claudia S.
Gkatzidou, Voula
Oakeshott, Pippa
Hone, Kate
Sadiq, S. Tariq
Sonnenberg, Pam
Shahmanesh, Maryam
author_sort Aicken, Catherine R. H.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Control of sexually transmitted infections (STI) is a global public health priority. Despite the UK’s free, confidential sexual health clinical services, those at greatest risk of STIs, including young people, report barriers to use. These include: embarrassment regarding face-to-face consultations; the time-commitment needed to attend clinic; privacy concerns (e.g. being seen attending clinic); and issues related to confidentiality. A smartphone-enabled STI self-testing device, linked with online clinical care pathways for treatment, partner notification, and disease surveillance, is being developed by the eSTI(2) consortium. It is intended to benefit public health, and could do so by increasing testing among populations which underutilise existing services and/or by enabling rapid provision of effective treatment. We explored its acceptability among potential users. METHODS: In-depth interviews were conducted in 2012 with 25 sexually-experienced 16–24 year olds, recruited from Further Education colleges in an urban, high STI prevalence area. Thematic analysis was undertaken. RESULTS: Nine females and 16 males participated. 21 self-defined as Black; three, mixed ethnicity; and one, Muslim/Asian. 22 reported experience of STI testing, two reported previous STI diagnoses, and all had owned smartphones. Participants expressed enthusiasm about the proposed service, and suggested that they and their peers would use it and test more often if it were available. Utilizing sexual healthcare was perceived to be easier and faster with STI self-testing and online clinical care, which facilitated concealment of STI testing from peers/family, and avoided embarrassing face-to-face consultations. Despite these perceived advantages to privacy, new privacy concerns arose regarding communications technology: principally the risk inherent in having evidence of STI testing or diagnosis visible or retrievable on their phone. Some concerns arose regarding the proposed self-test’s accuracy, related to self-operation and the technology’s novelty. Several expressed anxiety around the possibility of being diagnosed and treated without any contact with healthcare professionals. CONCLUSIONS: Remote STI self-testing and online care appealed to these young people. It addressed barriers they associated with conventional STI services, thus may benefit public health through earlier detection and treatment. Our findings underpin development of online care pathways, as part of ongoing research to create this complex e-health intervention. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-016-3648-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-50222292016-09-20 Young people’s perceptions of smartphone-enabled self-testing and online care for sexually transmitted infections: qualitative interview study Aicken, Catherine R. H. Fuller, Sebastian S. Sutcliffe, Lorna J. Estcourt, Claudia S. Gkatzidou, Voula Oakeshott, Pippa Hone, Kate Sadiq, S. Tariq Sonnenberg, Pam Shahmanesh, Maryam BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Control of sexually transmitted infections (STI) is a global public health priority. Despite the UK’s free, confidential sexual health clinical services, those at greatest risk of STIs, including young people, report barriers to use. These include: embarrassment regarding face-to-face consultations; the time-commitment needed to attend clinic; privacy concerns (e.g. being seen attending clinic); and issues related to confidentiality. A smartphone-enabled STI self-testing device, linked with online clinical care pathways for treatment, partner notification, and disease surveillance, is being developed by the eSTI(2) consortium. It is intended to benefit public health, and could do so by increasing testing among populations which underutilise existing services and/or by enabling rapid provision of effective treatment. We explored its acceptability among potential users. METHODS: In-depth interviews were conducted in 2012 with 25 sexually-experienced 16–24 year olds, recruited from Further Education colleges in an urban, high STI prevalence area. Thematic analysis was undertaken. RESULTS: Nine females and 16 males participated. 21 self-defined as Black; three, mixed ethnicity; and one, Muslim/Asian. 22 reported experience of STI testing, two reported previous STI diagnoses, and all had owned smartphones. Participants expressed enthusiasm about the proposed service, and suggested that they and their peers would use it and test more often if it were available. Utilizing sexual healthcare was perceived to be easier and faster with STI self-testing and online clinical care, which facilitated concealment of STI testing from peers/family, and avoided embarrassing face-to-face consultations. Despite these perceived advantages to privacy, new privacy concerns arose regarding communications technology: principally the risk inherent in having evidence of STI testing or diagnosis visible or retrievable on their phone. Some concerns arose regarding the proposed self-test’s accuracy, related to self-operation and the technology’s novelty. Several expressed anxiety around the possibility of being diagnosed and treated without any contact with healthcare professionals. CONCLUSIONS: Remote STI self-testing and online care appealed to these young people. It addressed barriers they associated with conventional STI services, thus may benefit public health through earlier detection and treatment. Our findings underpin development of online care pathways, as part of ongoing research to create this complex e-health intervention. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-016-3648-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2016-09-13 /pmc/articles/PMC5022229/ /pubmed/27624633 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3648-y Text en © The Author(s). 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Aicken, Catherine R. H.
Fuller, Sebastian S.
Sutcliffe, Lorna J.
Estcourt, Claudia S.
Gkatzidou, Voula
Oakeshott, Pippa
Hone, Kate
Sadiq, S. Tariq
Sonnenberg, Pam
Shahmanesh, Maryam
Young people’s perceptions of smartphone-enabled self-testing and online care for sexually transmitted infections: qualitative interview study
title Young people’s perceptions of smartphone-enabled self-testing and online care for sexually transmitted infections: qualitative interview study
title_full Young people’s perceptions of smartphone-enabled self-testing and online care for sexually transmitted infections: qualitative interview study
title_fullStr Young people’s perceptions of smartphone-enabled self-testing and online care for sexually transmitted infections: qualitative interview study
title_full_unstemmed Young people’s perceptions of smartphone-enabled self-testing and online care for sexually transmitted infections: qualitative interview study
title_short Young people’s perceptions of smartphone-enabled self-testing and online care for sexually transmitted infections: qualitative interview study
title_sort young people’s perceptions of smartphone-enabled self-testing and online care for sexually transmitted infections: qualitative interview study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5022229/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27624633
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3648-y
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