Developing and pretesting a sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) school health promotion intervention to reduce sexual transmission of HIV in a high-burden rural setting in KwaZulu-Natal

Adolescents in SA face huge, interlinked epidemic of poor sexual reproductive health (SRH) and high HIV-incidence. Innovative approaches to improve demand and uptake of SRH and HIV-prevention is critical. Schools present an opportunity to deliver effective health-interventions within sustainable infrastructure.

The aim of this work is to adapt and evaluate a scalable and sustainable school health-promotion intervention to improve SRH and HIV-prevention uptake amongst 15-19-year-old learners in rural KZN.

I hypothesize that an adapted multi-component SRH programme integrated with biomedical interventions delivered to learners will improve SRH and HIV-prevention uptake in a high HIV-burden rural KZN district.

I will use the MRC-framework for the development and evaluation of complex interventions to guide this work and a mixed-method study design to address the research questions.

I will use participatory research methods to inform the contextual adaptation, integration of biomedical HIV-prevention and refining of the SRH intervention.

I will pilot and assess the acceptability and feasibility of the adapted intervention using process evaluation and pre and post surveys to measure changes in self-reported SRH and HIV-risk behaviours.

Further, I will provide exploratory data on the effect of the intervention on improving uptake of SRH and biomedical HIV-prevention using clinical linkage data.