PrEP awareness, willingness, and likelihood to use future HIV prevention methods among undergraduate college students in an ending the HIV epidemic jurisdiction

Abstract

Objective

Identify factors associated with PrEP awareness, willingness, and future prevention modalities among undergraduate college students.

Participants

Undergraduates (N = 701) were recruited from a private university, a public research university, and a private historically Black college and university for an online survey.

Methods

Upon multiple imputations, a multivariate logistic model, a multivariate multinomial model, and independent multivariate ordinal logistic models were used to calculate Rubin’s rules-pooled adjusted odds ratios for PrEP awareness, willingness, and future HIV prevention methods.

Results

Only 33.4% of students had heard of and 32.4% were willing to take PrEP. PrEP willingness was higher among sexual minority students compared to heterosexual/straight students (OR = 1.65; 95% CI: 1.03–2.63); p = .036). The likelihood to take a future vaccine or antibody prophylaxis treatment was higher than the likelihood to take injectable PrEP or implants.

Conclusions

Interventions to increase PrEP uptake and willingness among undergraduates should emphasize equity in HIV education and include future prevention modalities.

Keywords:

• HIV prevention
• PrEP
• sexual health
• undergraduate college students

Acknowledgment

We thank all survey participants and members of the research team.

Conflict of interest disclosure

Ethics approval and consent to participate. All participants provided informed consent prior to participation. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Boards at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Johnson C. Smith University. The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Authors’ contributions

All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request with a data use agreement.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was used to support this research and/or the preparation of the manuscript.