New NIH R01 · Kumasi, Ghana

TAG-MI

A Mobile Intervention to Improve Mental Health and Adherence to HIV Care among Youth in Ghana

In Ghana, AIDS remains a leading cause of death among youth living with HIV. At HIV clinics in and around Kumasi, young people average about 73% adherence to antiretroviral therapy, and half are not virally suppressed. Unmet mental health needs are a key driver of these outcomes, yet HIV clinics in Ghana, as in the U.S., have limited mental health staff and resources.

TAG-MI combines the Text-Based Adherence Game (TAG), an mHealth intervention that improved HIV treatment adherence in our earlier work, with a simple, text-delivered, CBT-based approach to mental health monitoring and support. The study will test whether this integrated approach improves mental health and HIV outcomes among youth ages 18–24 while streamlining care relative to the current referral-based standard of care.

Study aims

• Tailor TAG-MI to ensure feasibility and acceptability (n = 12).
• Test the efficacy of TAG-MI plus standard of care versus standard of care alone in a fully powered randomized controlled trial (n = 150).
• Identify patient, staff, and organizational factors that help or hinder implementation.

The long-term goal is a scalable, streamlined model of HIV and mental health care that can extend to other settings, including U.S. communities where access to care is limited.