The effectiveness of social networking interventions for HIV prevention : a systematic review

Abstract

Background: HIV prevalence is increasing around the globe, causing higher rates of morbidity and mortality. It is currently incurable but can be prevented by using various appropriate interventions. In recent years, social networking such as Facebook, Twitter and phone text messaging has emerged as a vital tool in communication. It has brought about an ever-increasing convenience to people finding casual sexual liaisons and taking part in activities that might increase the risk of HIV infection. However, such digital technology could also be used against HIV in its prevention. With its advantages in cost-effectiveness and efficiency, this mode of intervention could prove to be vital in reducing prevalence in the future.

Methods: The relevant RCTs were extracted from online databases using relevant keywords dated fromJanuary2005 toJuly2015. The effectiveness of different social networking intervention methods were identified and evaluated. The quality of these studies was accessed using the Jadad Quality Scale.

Result: Social media networking possesses great potential in delivering health intervention material but the evidence reviewed thus far suggests that effectiveness is not strong. At present, these emerging researching methods are still in an early stage and there are some challenges in implementing such intervention on a larger scale. Moreover, there is no agreed guideline of using social networking as an intervention in HIV prevention yet. In sum, these studies only assessed the indirect outcomes such as cognitive, psychological and behavioral changes and they failed to provide more direct outcomes such as the participants' HIV statuses at the end of the study, which would be needed to provide a more direct assessment of the health benefits for the effectiveness of their interventions. Overall, the strength of the evidence of effectiveness was moderate.

Conclusion: There is great potential in the application of social networking as an intervention tool for HIV prevention. Although only few RCTs in this review had standardized measurements of outcomes, most of them demonstrated the effectiveness of social networking intervention in terms of cognitive, psychological and behavioral changes in the high-risk groups as compared to the controls. Apart from needing to improve the quality of research in the future by using improved methods of outcome measurement, researches should also consider carrying out their investigation in regions of high HIV prevalence. In sum, based on the quality of evidence, it could be concluded that the strength of using social networking as interventions for HIV prevention was moderate.