The South Africa HIV ATTC applied for pilot funding in April 2019 to support a larger grant proposal to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and in June 2019 received $10,000 from the Brown University Alcohol Research Center on HIV (ARCH) to pilot the proposed monitoring and evaluation (M&E) process that was detailed in the larger grant submission. The overarching objective of both the pilot funding and the larger grant is to provide the infrastructure to support rigorous evaluation of our national SBIRT train-the-trainer model, which will be rolled out over the next year. Approximately 40% of the pilot funding will support data programming to develop systems to administer screening tools that would enable automated scoring via smartphones, tables, and scannable paper forms. The other 60% of the funds will go to support the purchase of the technology and equipment required for the pilot.

The South Africa HIV ATTC is working with some of our partner organizations to pilot our new M&E plan. A series of planning meetings have been held with our partners, and our first pilot test was conducted in late-November 2019. Our goal is to determine a brief set of M&E indicators (focused on provision of screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment) that can be tracked following the receipt of training. We will be using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and Drug Use Disorders Identification Test (DUDIT) screening tools, along with provider knowledge, confidence, and attitudes questionnaires to monitor providers’ understanding, use, and satisfaction in conducting brief screenings with their clients. We will be testing the implementation of these screening tools with both paper forms and tablet-based tools.

This piloting phase will enable the South Africa HIV ATTC to develop robust systems for collecting downstream impact data demonstrating the impact of training and technical assistance in priority areas and population for HIV prevention, treatment, and care.

Photo from pilot test with our partner TB HIV Care in November 2019

For more information on the ARCH center grant, see here: https://www.brown.edu/academics/medical/alcohol-research-center-on-hiv/