Abstract
Retention of participants in clinical trials is a central concern of HIV/STI behavioral researchers and research sponsors. This article describes the strategies used for addressing the challenges in retaining South African adolescents for a 54-month longitudinal study. The objective of the South African adolescent health promotion long-term follow-up trial was to test the sustainability of the effects of an HIV/STI risk reduction intervention, “Let Us Protect Our Future,” on young adolescents as they aged into middle and late adolescence. Inaccurate contact information, invalid mobile telephone numbers, lack of transportation, transitory family addresses, and family relocation were among the challenges to retaining participants. Despite a significant gap in time of 36 months between the main trial and the long-term follow-up study, 99.2% of 1057 participants were retained. Solutions used for retaining the adolescents are discussed with suggestions offered for retaining adolescents in longitudinal HIV/STI prevention clinical trials in low resource countries.
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This study was funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health (1R01MH065867 AND 2R01MH065867).
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Institutional Review Board (IRB) #8 at the University of Pennsylvania, which was the designated IRG under the federalwide assurances of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Fort Hare, South Africa, approved the study in accordance with the ethnical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki.
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The informed consent process covered activities through the 12-month follow-up, 42-month and 54-month follow-up.
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The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Icard, L.D., Jemmott, J.B., Carty, C. et al. Retention of South African Adolescents in a 54-Month Longitudinal HIV Risk Reduction Trial. Prev Sci 18, 534–540 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-017-0793-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-017-0793-1