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. 2024 Nov;7(11):1107-1113.
doi: 10.1002/jac5.2043. Epub 2024 Nov 6.

Assessing pharmacy students' HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) prescribing knowledge, PrEP attitudes, and HIV-related stigma

Celeste Noelle Bustria  1 , Finan Yohannes  1 , Jennifer Cocohoba  1 , Lee Nguyen  2 , Nimish Patel  3 , Parya Saberi  1
Affiliations

Assessing pharmacy students' HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) prescribing knowledge, PrEP attitudes, and HIV-related stigma

Celeste Noelle Bustria et al. J Am Coll Clin Pharm. 2024 Nov.

Abstract

Introduction: Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) significantly reduces the risk of acquiring HIV. To increase PrEP prescribing, it is crucial to evaluate the preparedness of future pharmacists who will play a pivotal role in providing PrEP education, counseling, and prescribing.

Objective: We assessed PrEP-prescribing knowledge, attitudes, and HIV-related stigma of pharmacy students.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional web-based survey of student pharmacists in their final two years of education and training at the three University of California pharmacy schools. Survey questions assessed students' awareness of PrEP, familiarity with prescribing guidelines and Senate Bill 159 (SB159), PrEP knowledge, HIV-related stigma, and attitudes about PrEP. The sample was characterized using descriptive statistics, and non-parametric tests were used to examine associations between dependent variables and independent variables. A p-value <0.05 was deemed statistically significant.

Results: A total of 110 students participated in the survey. The greatest familiarity with guidelines was observed in male (77.4%) (p = 0.047) and gay-identifying (100%) (p = 0.039) students compared with other genders and sexual identities, respectively. Non-advanced pharmacy practice experience (APPE) students (70.3%) displayed significantly more familiarity with SB159 than APPE students (65.2%) (p = 0.006). Non-APPE students displayed higher HIV-related stigma compared with APPE students (13.8 vs. 9.4, p = 0.0015). Significant differences in PrEP knowledge (p = 0.0105), HIV-related stigma (p = 0.0003), and PrEP attitudes (p = 0.0098) were observed between the schools. African American students had a significantly higher mean PrEP attitudes score (mean = 51.0, standard deviation [SD] = 3.6) compared with other racial categories (p = 0.0329).

Conclusion: Elevated HIV-related stigma, in the presence of high levels of PrEP knowledge, highlights the need to focus on destigmatizing HIV prevention services and increasing anti-stigma training, which is imperative in preparing student pharmacists to prescribe PrEP.

Keywords: HIV; education; pharmacist; pre-exposure prophylaxis; social stigma; student.

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Conflict of interest statement

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT Jennifer Cocohoba has received an investigator-initiated grant from Viiv Healthcare. Lee Nguyen received personal fees from WCG Institutional Biosafety Committee and received a grant from Merck & Co. Nimish Patel has received investigator-initiated grant support from Gilead Sciences and served on advisory boards for ViiV Healthcare. All other authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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