Point-of-care Viral Load Testing Among HIV-infected Adolescents in Haiti

This study is designed as an individual randomized trial among 150 HIV-infected adolescents aged 10-24 years who have been on ART for \>6 months and will be randomized in a 1:1 fashion to one of two arms: 1) the intervention arm (POC) will receive a POC VL test with adherence counseling informed by the VL result the same day as testing vs. 2) the standard-of-care arm (SOC) will receive a standard laboratory-based test with adherence counseling informed by the VL result 1 month later. The study tests an intervention, POC VL testing, which reduces the time between sample collection and participant receipt of results, thus decreasing the number of steps in the HIV treatment cascade. This intervention was developed to addresses health systems-based barriers which delay clinic, laboratory, and data management processes for VL monitoring for HIV-infected adolescents. Our results will contribute to research on whether POC VL testing is a feasible testing method which could be incorporated into health systems in similar resource-limited settings and whether it can improve outcomes among HIV-infected adolescents.