David Seekings, PhD – Ontario HIV Treatment Network & REACHMarvelous Muchenje – Women’s Health in Women’s Hands

Piloting WILLOW in Ontario

2

Overview

• The WILLOW intervention• Our process • Lesson Learned

3

WILLOWWomen Involved in Life Learning from Other Women

Target Population: Heterosexual adult women living with HIV, 18-50 years

Aim: Reduce HIV and STI transmission risk behaviours

Method: Series of 4 facilitated small group educational sessions

4

The process so far

• Systematic review – identified several effective interventions

• Worked with WHIWH to select best fit to local context• Follow up interviews with others experienced with

WILLOW

5

Considerations for Choosing Interventions

• WHIWH received summaries of several effective interventions from OHTN, reviewed them and selected two (2)

1) WILLOW program by Wingood• Aligns easily with our existing HIV program and could

easily be integrated– We already run a monthly group for HIV-positive women– We have smaller mental health groups

• WILLOW could fall under this structure

6

Considerations for Choosing Interventions

2) HIV Prevention Intervention for Low-income African American women by Dancy• WHIWH received a 3 year funding from City of Toronto,

and we wanted to incorporate a program that has already been found to be effective

• Intervention developed for African American women, could fit in with our priority population

*** Plans in place to pilot test the intervention

7

Training

• Worked with OHTN to support training for the intervention

• OHTN offered the options for training, either go to US or do it in Toronto

• Choice to do it in Toronto, so that we could build capacity locally

• We invited partner agencies to recruit service providers and peers affiliated with their organizations to participate in the training

• A team of 16 facilitators received training

8

Lessons Learned• Intervention is too prescriptive • Difficulties of separating roles of support and information

provision by facilitators• It does not cover some of the issues that are relevant to

the Canadian context e.g. cultural issues not taken into consideration, language specificity, migration related issues, etc.

• Made assumptions about the skill level required for facilitators

• Importance of a mental health therapist/counselor to provide support on site

9

Lessons Learned

• Can take time, even with proven intervention– Additional capacity-building

• Importance of having good understanding of context and capacities at the start

• Training on intervention delivery was not enough– Additional capacity-building training

10

Next steps

• Pilot the intervention• Evaluate• Adapt (as necessary)• Scale up

Thank you