New Monitoring Indicators for a Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Program in British Columbia, Canada

What is it about?

Despite the considerable clinical and public health progress that has been made in controlling HIV, Canada has recorded a substantial proportion of new cases among individuals at high risk of acquiring HIV. Therefore, a program was initiated in 2018 to provide pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a highly effective medication for preventing HIV acquisition when taken as prescribed, at no cost to residents in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Given the importance of assessing the success of such programs, in this study, we sought to describe the steps to develop PrEP program monitoring indicators comprehensively. To illustrate their application using live data from our BC PrEP program database. We finalized 14 monitoring indicators, including gender, age, health authority, new clients enrolled by provider type and by the health authority, new clients dispensed PrEP, clients per provider, key qualifying HIV risk factor(s), client status, PrEP usage type, PrEP quantity dispensed, syphilis and HIV testing and incident cases, and adverse drug reaction events.

Featured Image

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Why is it important?

It is critical to understand and identify the success of any ongoing program. The indicators we propose enable tracking the Program’s progress while identifying successes and areas of improvement. The monitoring indicators we developed provide up-to-date information regarding our BC PrEP program, can be applied in other jurisdictions and can improve public health decision-making.

Perspectives