Engaging the ‘Missing Men’ in the HIV Treatment Cascade: Creating a Tailored Intervention to Improve Men’s Uptake of HIV Care Services in Rural South Africa: A Study Protocol

Abstract

Men, especially young men, have been consistently missing from the HIV care cascade, leading to poor health outcomes in men and ongoing transmission of HIV in young women in South Africa. Although these men may not be missing for the same reasons across the cascade and may need different interventions, early work has shown similar trends in men’s low uptake of HIV care services and suggested that the social costs of testing and accessing care are extremely high for men, particularly in South Africa. Interventions and data collection have hitherto, by and large, focused on men in relation to HIV prevention in women and have not approached the problem through the male lens. Using the participatory method, the overall aim of this study is to improve health outcomes in men and women through formative work to co-create male-specific interventions in an HIV-hyper endemic setting in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.