Improving health literacy about Tuberculosis among drug users. A pilot randomized controlled trial

Aceijas, Carmen ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3652-6536, Weaver, Tim ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3437-3556, Baez-Caraballo, Pamela, Cummings, Nerissa and Devi Sowamber, Neelam (2019) Improving health literacy about Tuberculosis among drug users. A pilot randomized controlled trial. OCIMUM. [Other] (doi:10.33513/ddad/1901-02)

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Abstract

Introduction: Despite effective treatment, tuberculosis remains among the top-10 causes of death causing ~1.3 million deaths in 2017. Furthermore, tuberculosis infection rates have increased amongst excluded populations such as people misusing substances.

Objectives and design: We conducted a two London sites pilot randomized controlled trial to test interventions, recruitment, attrition rates and assessment procedures of a parallel, three-arms controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of tuberculosis health literacy interventions among drug dependent (heroin, crack cocaine or heroin and crack cocaine) population in treatment.

Results: Forty-two subjects were recruited to the pilot trial (response rate = 26%) and randomized to three interventions (1st: Information booklet; 2nd: Interactive seminar; 3rd: Interactive seminar + contingency management targeting tuberculosis-health-related action). Baseline and post-intervention tuberculosis knowledge scores were obtained and re-assessed at 2-months follow up. The overall attrition rate was 43%. The knowledge scale had good internal reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.7). Statistically significant increases in knowledge scores (baseline to post-intervention = 5.9 points, baseline to follow-up = 4.3) were recorded for the whole sample (CI = 99%; p < 0.001 for both analysis), but no statistically significant differences between-groups were observed (p = 0.7). Half of participants in the contingency management group achieved their health-action targets.

Conclusion: Health literacy interventions to increase knowledge about tuberculosis among drug users are feasible and achieve promising increases in knowledge and health-related actions but measures to prevent a high attrition rate in a large-scale trial must be introduced. The absence of difference between trial-group outcomes suggests low-intensity interventions may achieve knowledge gain too. Further investigation of contingency management to promote tuberculosis-related health behaviours is needed.

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