Developing Digital Media to Destigmatize Emergency Department Human Immunodeficiency Virus Testing Among Sexual and Racial Minority Youth: A Hyper-iterative Methodology

Rates of undiagnosed youth human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) remain problematically high across the United States and internationally. In addition, youth HIV test rates remain consistently low, and youth with HIV remain undiagnosed for longer periods of time as compared with older populations. Youth HIV remains especially persistent among African American adolescents and emerging adults, who are less likely to have consistent access to primary care and thus to HIV testing and prevention education. Therefore, increasing youth HIV test rates has become an important priority in emergency departments and other settings. At the same time, many young patients may not disclose risk behaviors or even engage in discussions of HIV testing when they interact with healthcare providers because they may fear being stigmatized. Technology-based interventions present valuable opportunities to reframe risk reporting and discussions of testing by designing computer-mediated interactions that young sexual and racial minority participants find non-judgmental and less threatening. If designed in accordance with empirically tested theories of instructional design/multimedia learning and established models of behavior change, technology-based interventions can increase the number of HIV tests offered to young people and offer testing in nonthreatening ways that more young people will accept. The current paper describes a hyper-iterative methodology used to develop the Mobile Augmented Screening (MAS) tool, a technology-based intervention designed to destigmatize HIV and increase HIV test rates among youth.