↓ Skip to main content

Understanding attitudes, barriers and challenges in a small island nation to disease and partner notification for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections: a qualitative study

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Public Health, May 2015
Altmetric Badge

Mentioned by

twitter
1 X user

Citations

dimensions_citation
21 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
123 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
Understanding attitudes, barriers and challenges in a small island nation to disease and partner notification for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections: a qualitative study
Published in
BMC Public Health, May 2015
DOI 10.1186/s12889-015-1794-2
Pubmed ID
Authors

O Peter Adams, Anne O Carter, Lynda Redwood-Campbell

Abstract

In Barbados sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV are not notifiable diseases and there is not a formal partner notification (PN) programme. Objectives were to understand likely attitudes, barriers, and challenges to introducing mandatory disease notification (DN) and partner notification (PN) for HIV and other STIs in a small island state. Six key informants identified study participants. Interviews were conducted, recorded, transcribed and analysed for content using standard methods. Participants (16 males, 13 females, median age 59 years) included physicians, nurses, and representatives from governmental, youth, HIV, men's, women's, church, and private sector organisations. The median estimated acceptability by society of HIV/STI DN on a scale of 1 (unacceptable) to 5 (completely acceptable) was 3. Challenges included; maintaining confidentiality in a small island; public perception that confidentiality was poorly maintained; fear and stigma; testing might be deterred; reporting may not occur; enacting legislation would be difficult; and opposition by some opinion leaders. For PN, contract referral was the most acceptable method and provider referral the least. Contract referral unlike provider referral was not "a total suspension of rights" while taking into account that "people need a little gentle pressure sometimes". Extra counselling would be needed to elicit contacts or to get patients to notify partners. Shame, stigma and discrimination in a small society may make PN unacceptable and deter testing. With patient referral procrastination may occur, and partners may react violently and not come in for care. With provider referral patients may have concerns about confidentiality including neighbours becoming suspicious if a home visit is used as the contact method. Successful contact tracing required time and effort. With contract referral people may neither inform contacts nor say that they did not. Strategies to overcome barriers to DN and PN included public education, enacting appropriate legislation to allow DN and PN, good patient counselling and maintaining confidentiality. There was both concern that mandatory DN and PN would deter testing and recognition of the benefits. Public and practitioner education and enabling legislation would be necessary, and the public needed to be convinced that confidentiality would be maintained.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profile of 1 X user who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 123 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Tanzania, United Republic of 1 <1%
Unknown 122 99%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 22 18%
Researcher 19 15%
Student > Ph. D. Student 18 15%
Student > Bachelor 16 13%
Student > Doctoral Student 7 6%
Other 23 19%
Unknown 18 15%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 30 24%
Nursing and Health Professions 20 16%
Social Sciences 18 15%
Psychology 7 6%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 6 5%
Other 17 14%
Unknown 25 20%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 03 May 2015.
All research outputs
#18,409,030
of 22,803,211 outputs
Outputs from BMC Public Health
#12,845
of 14,856 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#192,610
of 264,370 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Public Health
#204
of 238 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,803,211 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 11th percentile – i.e., 11% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 14,856 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.9. This one is in the 6th percentile – i.e., 6% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 264,370 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 15th percentile – i.e., 15% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 238 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 9th percentile – i.e., 9% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.