HealthCall:Brief Intervention to Reduce Non-injecting Drug Use in HIV Primary Care Clinics

HealthCall: Brief Intervention to Reduce Drug Use in HIV Primary Care

Among HIV-infected individuals, non-injection drug use (NIDU) is associated with poor HIV medication adherence, greater HIV/AIDS risk behaviors, and increasing non-AIDS mortality. Thus reducing NIDU among HIV infected individuals is critical to their survival and to limiting the spread of HIV. We propose to study the efficacy of a technologically enhanced brief intervention (HealthCall) to reduce NIDU in HIV primary care patients that demands little from busy medical staff and is well accepted by patients. In a 3-arm randomized clinical trial will test the efficacy of (a) Motivational Interviewing (MI)+HealthCall; (b) MI-only; and (c) a control condition (advice + DVD HIV health education) in reducing NIDU.

Inclusion Criteria:

• All research volunteers will be 18 and older and HIV positive. We will include participants whose primary drug is non-injection use of cocaine, opioids including heroin, or methamphetamines and current use in the past 30 days > 4 days. Participants will need to complete a medically supervised detoxification if such detoxification is required.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Excluded are research volunteers for whom participation would not be clinically appropriate, who clearly could not participate. Psychotic, suicidal or homicidal patients require clinical management that is too intensive for this study, and we have no evidence that MI+HealthCall would be effective among injection drug users. Leaving New York precludes follow-up. Gross psychomotor/cognitive impairments that may hinder patients' HealthCall use. Hearing and severe vision impairments that preclude telephone use precludes randomization to MI+HealthCall.