Providers’ perceptions of the diaphragm in Southern Africa and the United States

Ibis worked with colleagues at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the University of Zimbabwe, and the Medical Research Council of South Africa to better understand current HIV prevention and contraceptive counseling practice, and assess providers’ opinions of integrating new technologies into their practice in South Africa, the United States, and Zimbabwe. In the first phase of the study, we conducted qualitative interviews with 30 providers (nurses and physicians), which included questions about current counseling practice, how counseling differs for different patients (i.e., young women, pregnant women, HIV-positive women), what providers know about current and new HIV prevention technologies under development, and their opinions of the diaphragm as a potential HIV prevention method. These results were used to develop a survey that was administered to a random sample of approximately 1,200 providers in each country. Following the release of the MIRA trial results, we shifted the focus of the survey to address more specifically contraceptive counseling for HIV-positive women and women at risk of HIV infection.