Partner Notification Services in Kisii County, Kenya
Evaluating Behaviour Change Communication Strategies
Keywords:
Partner notification services, behavior change, communication strategies, HIV Testing, contactAbstract
In the East and southern African region, between 40-50% of people living with HIV remain undiagnosed. Partner Notification Services (PNS) programme was established to scale-up HIV testing coverage. This paper describes the behaviour change communication strategies used to implement PNS; and analyses HIV testing patterns arising from the implementation of PNS. Drawing data from purposively selected respondents from three health facilities in Kisii County, the sequential mixed method design was used to qualitatively analysis the views of providers of partner notification services on the behaviour change communication strategies and to present a quantitative analyse of partner notification trends in the year 2018. The results identified the following behaviour change communication strategies: contract referral, provider referral, dual referral, passive referral, telephoning, the suggestion box, and charts. Though the strategies have impacted HIV testing, inherent setbacks could slow down the process. These include lack of prior assessment of the PNS policy environment, pre-requisite training and adequate facilitation on communication strategies in PNS implementation. To increase HIV testing coverage, the application of a mixture of the communication strategies rather than a mutually exclusive process is critical.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
- Open Access authors retain the copyrights of their papers, and all open access articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.
- The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations.
- While the advice and information in this journal are believed to be true and accurate on the date of its going to press, neither the authors, the editors, nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made.The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.
