Structural Interventions (SI) Best Practices Criteria

Structural Interventions

National HIV prevention goals call for expansion of efforts to prevent HIV infection using a combination of effective, evidence-based approaches.

Structural interventions do not rely on individual behavior change to alter the environment and can be used to enhance the effectiveness of biomedical and behavioral interventions. The SI Best Practices contains two sets of criteria to evaluate interventions: Evidence-based and Evidence-informed.

Evidence-Based Interventions (EBIs)
  • Evaluate interventions with a comparison arm
  • Sample size is ≥ 40 per arm
  • Demonstrate significant positive effects for improving LRC outcomes

SI EBIs provide the strongest evidence of efficacy.

PRS SI EBI Criteria pdf icon[PDF – 231 KB]

Evidence-Informed Interventions (EIs)
    • Evaluate interventions that have one-group designs and pre-post data
    • Evaluate interventions with a comparison arm (sample <40 but ≥ 25 per arm)
    • Demonstrate significant positive effects for improving LRC outcomes

    SI interventions have some evidence of working and ideally, need further testing with a comparison group or with larger samples.

    PRS SI EI Criteria pdf icon[PDF – 219 KB]

Additional Resources