In this study, the investigators will evaluate whether introducing a remote nurse to screen, counsel, and guide clients through HIV self-testing (via a telehealth platform) and support interested clients (via SMS) between pharmacy visits increases PrEP/PEP initiations and continuation compared to standard PrEP/PEP delivery by pharmacy providers. The investigators hypothesize that pharmacy PrEP/PEP services delivered with telehealth support will result in better service utilization and implementation outcomes compared to standard delivery and be cost-effective to implement.

Participating study pharmacies will be 1:1 randomized 24 pharmacies (n=1,580 clients ≥15 years) to either: 1) telehealth support, where a remote nurse screens, counsels, and guides clients through HIV self-testing (HIVST) and, between visits, communicates with interested clients via 2-way SMS, or 2) standard delivery, where the pharmacy provider performs all delivery tasks and clients are not given additional support. The primary outcomes are PrEP/PEP initiation and continuation, assessed 180 days following clients' first pharmacy PrEP/PEP visit.

Inclusion Criteria:

Pharmacies

• Registered with the Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB)
• Must have at least one full-time licensed pharmacist or pharmaceutical technologist on staff
• Must have a private room where HIV testing and PrEP/PEP counseling can occur
• >3 km from other study pharmacies
• Willing to participate in research activities, including 2-day training for pharmacy providers
• Willing to share pharmacy records with us
• Sells HIVST kits that are WHO certified.

Pharmacists/remote nurses

• ≥ 18 years old
• Licensed pharmacist, pharmaceutical technologist, or nurse
• Willing to provide PrEP and PEP services, including HIV testing and associated counseling services
• Willing to complete training on PEP/PrEP service delivery at pharmacies, including certification for rapid diagnostic testing
• Able and willing to provide informed consent

Clients

• ≥ 15 years old
• Interested in being screened for PrEP or PEP
• Meets all criteria to be eligible for pharmacy-delivered PrEP or PEP on the Prescribing Checklist, including being at risk for HIV and not having any medical conditions that might contraindicate PrEP/PEP safety
• Able and willing to provide informed consent

Exclusion Criteria:

Clients

• Unwilling to provide a phone number at which an RA can reach them for completing surveys and communicate important study-related information
• Currently enrolled in any other HIV vaccine or prevention trial
• Have a condition that would preclude provision of informed consent, make study participation unsafe, complicate interpretation of outcome data, or otherwise interfere with achieving study objectives

Participant-level pharmacy record and research data will be shared through deposition of the data in an open-access public repository (Dryad). In addition to sharing the study data publicly, data dictionaries and other tools supporting use of the data will be shared.

De-identified pharmacy record and research data from this study will be deposited in the Dryad data repository within 12 months of publication.

The study data will be accessible through the Dryad data repository. For all publications, a dataset will be created that is assigned a digital object identifier (DOI), which will be referenced in the publication so the research community can easily find and access the data, if interested. The Dryad repository can also be searched by topic, institution, and investigator name, which should make it easy for other interested parties to find and access the study data.

Any study data that cannot be shared via Dryad, will be made available through a formal request to the PIs. We will share data and supporting documentation upon request to outside investigators, after scientific review, IRB approval, and obtaining relevant Data Use Agreements.