Research Article

Advancing Behavioral HIV Prevention: Adapting an Evidence-Based Intervention for People Living with HIV and Alcohol Use Disorders

Table 2

Focus group script for treatment care providers.

Patient HIV-specific knowledge and risk behaviors(1) What do you think is your patients’ level of understanding about HIV transmission risk?
(2) What types of HIV risk behaviors do you perceive in your patients?
(3) Why do you think patients practice risky behaviors? What kinds of situations seem the most common?
(4) What do you think is the role of information deficits in leading to risky behavior? What specific information deficits do you think your patients have?
(5) What do you think is the role of motivational obstacles in contributing to risky behavior?
(6) What do you think is the role of behavioral skills deficits in contributing to risky behavior? What specific behavioral skills deficits do you think are present?

Perception of patient alcohol use(7) Approximately how many patients in the clinic do you think are diagnosed with alcohol use disorders?
(8) What do you think contributes most to excessive drinking in your patients?

Perception of patient alcohol and HIV-related knowledge/attitudes(9) Do you think there are any negative attitudes towards safer sexual and substance use behaviors that patients possess? If yes, what are they?
(10) Do you think there are any norms that patients have that interfere with safer sexual and substance using behaviors? If yes, what are they?

Current practice in the clinic (11) Do you regularly discuss alcohol use with your patients? If so, how often?
(12) Is discussing alcohol use difficult to navigate as a provider?
(13) What HIV prevention approaches do you use right now? How well do they work? Are there any improvements that could be made that would make them more effective?
(14) What has worked best to decrease substance abuse (particularly alcohol) or to elicit other behavioral changes like HIV risk reduction with your patients? What has been tried that was not successful?

Intervention-specific(15) What type of intervention would work best? Individual or group?
(16) How long should each session last and how many intervention sessions seem reasonable?
(17) What time of the day should the sessions be in order to not interfere with clinic operations?
(18) What day of the week would work best to gain patient participation?
(19) What mode of presentation would work best?
(20) How would this intervention be best implemented in this facility without disrupting the routine?
(21) What would be a good way to make sure that patients attend these sessions?