Eita! Reaching Communities and Young People to Drive Demand for Oral Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis in South Africa

Abstract

PurposeThis paper describes a holistic but flexible demand creation strategy for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in national public health-care settings in low-income to middle-income countries. MethodsWe describe the development and implementation of a model to drive demand for oral PrEP uptake and use as part of comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services in South Africa: The Eita! model. The project adapted two existing response hierarchy models (marketing models used to describe the stages individuals move through from being unaware to using a product), to formulate the Eita! model. Using the RE-AIM framework, we report on the reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance of the Eita! model. ResultsMore than 34 million connections were made from December 2018 to 2021 through a variety of channels: social media and websites, at events and mobile clinic outreach, and radio and community dialogs. There were 42,447 adolescent girls and young women reached in-person during this time, 16,823 adolescent girls and young women presented for sexual and reproductive health services, and of those 14,637 (87%) initiated on PrEP. The model was implemented in eight health-care facilities and four mobile clinics in three provinces in South Africa. A total of 26 trainings were delivered to project staff implementing the strategy. Various demand creation resources, such as materials and online platforms, have since been adopted by the National Department of Health as national tools. DiscussionThe Eita! model was successfully implemented to support the uptake of HIV prevention services and rollout of biomedical prevention products, and can be adapted by other low-income to middle-income countries.