Feldacker Lab

Research focus

NIH R01 · 2024

Expanding and Scaling Two-way Texting to Reduce Unnecessary Follow-Up and Improve Adverse Event Identification Among Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision Clients in the Republic of South Africa

Male circumcision (MC) is a critical HIV prevention intervention with global support for expansion across sub- Saharan Africa (SSA). MC is safe: routine programs in SSA report adverse event (AE) rates well under 2%. Nevertheless, global MC guidelines require one or more follow-up visits within 14 days for AE detection. With low AE rates, overstretched clinic staff waste invaluable resources conducting unnecessary routine reviews for MC clients without complications. Men healing well needlessly pay for transport, miss work, and wait for reviews, discouraging MC uptake. In weak healthcare systems in SSA, MC quality is buckling under pressure to provide quality MC services and meet ambitious…

From the public funding record at NIH RePORTER. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.