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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2011 Apr 21:342:d2022.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.d2022.

Outreach education for integration of HIV/AIDS care, antiretroviral treatment, and tuberculosis care in primary care clinics in South Africa: PALSA PLUS pragmatic cluster randomised trial

Merrick Zwarenstein  1 , Lara R Fairall, Carl Lombard, Pat Mayers, Angeni Bheekie, René G English, Simon Lewin, Max O Bachmann, Eric Bateman
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Outreach education for integration of HIV/AIDS care, antiretroviral treatment, and tuberculosis care in primary care clinics in South Africa: PALSA PLUS pragmatic cluster randomised trial

Merrick Zwarenstein et al. BMJ. .

Abstract

Objective: To investigate whether PALSA PLUS, an on-site educational outreach programme of non-didactic, case based, iterative clinical education of staff, led by a trainer, can increase access to and comprehensiveness of care for patients with HIV/AIDS.

Design: Cluster randomised trial.

Setting: Public primary care clinics offering HIV/AIDS care, antiretroviral treatment (ART), tuberculosis care, and ambulatory primary care in Free State province, South Africa.

Participants: Fifteen clinics all implementing decentralisation and task shifting were randomised. The clinics cared for 400,000 general primary care patients and 10,136 patients in an HIV/AIDS/ART programme. There were 150 nurses.

Intervention: On-site outreach education in eight clinics; no such education in seven (control).

Main outcome measures: Provision of co-trimoxazole prophylaxis among patients referred to the HIV/AIDS/ART programme, and detection of cases of tuberculosis among those in the programme. Proportion of patients in the programme enrolled through general primary care consultations.

Results: Patients referred to the HIV/AIDS programme through general primary care at intervention clinics were more likely than those at control clinics to receive co-trimoxazole prophylaxis (41%, (2253/5523) v 32% (1340/4210); odds ratio 1.95, 95% confidence interval 1.11 to 3.40), and tuberculosis was more likely to be diagnosed among patients with HIV/AIDS/ART (7% (417/5793) v 6% (245/4343); 1.25, 1.01 to 1.55). Enrolment in the HIV/AIDS and ART programme through HIV testing in general primary care was not significantly increased (53% v 50%; 1.19, 0.51 to 2.77). Secondary outcomes were similar, except for weight gain, which was higher in the intervention group (2.3 kg v 1.9 kg, P<0.001).

Conclusion: Though outreach education is an effective and feasible strategy for improving comprehensiveness of care and wellbeing of patients with HIV/AIDS, there is no evidence that it increases access to the ART programme. It is now being widely implemented in South Africa.

Trial registration: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN 24820584.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: All authors have completed the Unified Competing Interest form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from the corresponding author) and declare: no support from any organisation for the submitted work; no financial relationships with any organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

Figures

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Fig 1 Comparison of ART specialist training and PALSA PLUS outreach approach
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Fig 2 Details of clinic selection, allocation, enrolment, and follow-up in trial (IQR=interquartile range)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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