Impact of a Comprehensive Adolescent-Focused Case Finding Intervention on Uptake of HIV Testing and Linkage to Care Among Adolescents in Western Kenya

Overview

This manuscript describes the evaluation of an innovative adolescent package that included staff capacity building, program performance monitoring tools, an adolescent-focused HIV risk screening tool and adolescent-friendly health center hours that was implemented to improve care among adolescents aged 10-19 years in Western Kenya. This quasi-experimental study used program data at pre- and post-intervention periods to describe the effects of this adolescent package at 139 health care facilities (HCFs). During the pre-intervention period, 25,520 adolescents were tested and 198 were HIV-positive (0.8%) compared to 77,644 adolescents tested with 534 being HIV-positive (0.7%) during the post-intervention period. The proportion of HIV-positive adolescents linked to care increased from 61.6% to 94.0% (p<0.001).