HIV Peer Education Interventions：An Evidence Map

Abstract

Abstract Objective: This study aims to apply the evidence mapping method to systematically retrieve and summarize the clinical research literature on HIV peer education interventions to understand the distribution of evidence in this field. Methods: We conducted literature searches on the Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, Wanfang Database, CNKI, VIP Database, PubMed, Web of Science, CINAHL, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library, focusing on clinical randomized controlled trials (RCTs), nonrandomized controlled trials (prospective and retrospective cohort studies), and systematic reviews/meta-analyses of HIV peer education interventions. Two independent reviewers screened the included papers, extracted data, and assessed the quality of the included studies. Results: A total of 156 articles were included in this study. We analyzed the annual publication trends, study types, study sizes, and distribution of the clinical research. We also examined the methodological quality and conclusions of the systematic reviews, the distribution of study populations, follow-up and intervention durations in the included studies, the methods used in the intervention and control groups, and the outcome measures of the included studies. Conclusion: Currently, there is a lack of evidence in HIV peer education intervention research, specifically in terms of prospective and case‒control studies, studies targeting healthcare workers as the study population, long-term interventions and follow-ups, and mixed-method peer education intervention studies. The quality of clinical research design and systematic reviews needs improvement. Patient or Public Contribution： The first analysis of HIV peer education intervention studies using evidence maps found strengths in the field and a small number of high -quality systematic reviews/meta-analyses showing the effectiveness of interventions. We found that there is currently less evidence for cohort studies as well as case‒control studies, studies targeting health care workers as subjects, long-term interventions, and long-term follow-up, multivariate mixed peer education intervention studies in HIV peer education intervention research, and the quality of clinical study design and systematic evaluation needs to be improved. More high-quality studies are needed to confirm the effectiveness of HIV peer education interventions.