PrEP Best Practices Criteria
The Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Best Practices criteria are used to determine if interventions demonstrate sufficient evidence for improving PrEP use and persistence. Because the PrEP research intervention literature is relatively young and efficacy trials are limited in number, after consultations with HIV/STI researchers and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the Prevention Research Synthesis (PRS) Project developed two sets of criteria to evaluate PrEP interventions (i.e., Evidence-based and Evidence-informed).
These criteria focus on:
- Quality of study design
- Quality of study implementation and analysis
- strength of evidence of findings
Evidence-Based Interventions (EBIs)
- Evaluate interventions with a comparison arm
- Sample ≥ 40 per arm
- Demonstrate significant positive effects for improving PrEP use and persistence
Interventions are rigorously evaluated and provide the strongest evidence of efficacy.
Evidence-Informed Interventions (EIs)
- PrEP Evidence-Informed Interventions (EIs) are interventions evaluated with a comparison arm (sample < 40 but ≥ 25 per arm) or with one-group study designs that have pre-post data.
- EIs have shown significant positive effects for improving PrEP use and persistence.
Interventions have some evidence of working and need further testing with a comparison group.