Adolescent clubs and self-efficacy linked to better HIV outcomes

Adolescents living with HIV (ALHIV) face psychosocial challenges that could affect HIV treatment outcomes. Peer support networks and aspects of well-being, including self-efficacy, self-esteem, and social capital, could ameliorate these challenges. This retrospective analysis describes participation in existing facility-based adolescent clubs and the associations between club attendance, adolescent well-being, and HIV treatment outcomes. Data were collected through interviews with a sub-sample of adolescents aged 10-19 years and medical record abstraction of all adolescents attending HIV services at seven clinics in Tanzania. Independent variables included adolescent club attendance, self-efficacy, self-esteem, symptoms of depression/anxiety, social capital, and other health utilization or HIV experience characteristics. Study outcomes included visit adherence, viral suppression (<1000 cp/ml), and retention. Of 645 adolescents, 75% attended clubs at least once, with a median of eight..., Data were collected through interviews with a sub-sample of adolescents aged 10-19 years and medical record abstraction of all adolescents attending HIV services at seven clinics in Tanzania. Data were analyzed using STATA 16.1., , # Adolescent clubs and self-efficacy linked to better HIV outcomes

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.cnp5hqc5n](10.5061/dryad.cnp5hqc5n)

## Description of the data and file structure

We conducted a retrospective analysis of adolescents living with HIV attending seven health facilities with well-established adolescent clubs as part of their HIV clinical services. Data sources included (1) abstracted data on HIV/ART clinical visits from 2015 to 2019, (2) abstracted data on club attendance records from 2016 to 2018, and (3) data collected from structured interviews with a subset of attending adolescents in 2018.

Participant and siteid IDs are unlinkable to any personal identifiers. Neither ID alone nor in combination with other variables in the dataset can be used to identify any individual or geographic location within the study country, Tanzania. Two age variables, while treated as continuous in the analyses, were binned to declassify them as \"indirect identifiers.\" The remaining indirect ..., Among those recruited for an interview, caregivers of minors and adolescents who were either emancipated or age 18 years or older provided written informed consent. Adolescent minors (age 10–17) provided verbal assent. For adolescents whose medical record information was included in the analysis but who were not recruited for interview, a waiver of informed consent was granted under a separate protocol approved by the National Research Ethics Committee of the National Institute for Medical Research in Tanzania and the US-based IRB, Advarra. All data were fully anonymized using participant and site ID numbers unlinked to any personal identifiers.