LAUSR

Major breakthroughs inHIV treatment over the past decades have rendered HIV a chronic manageable condition, allowing many individuals to live longer, healthier lives (Singh et al., 2019). However, this is only possible if people with HIV (PWH) adhere to the antiretroviral therapy (ART; Chen et al., 2017). Factors associated with poor ART adherence include pill burden, medication side effects, health beliefs, busy schedules, substance abuse, and other comorbidities (Cheng et al., 2018). Currently, oral ART formulations are routinely available to PWH, whereas injectable long-acting ART (ILART) formulations administered intramuscularly (IMs) every 4 or 8 weeks, such as cabotegravir, an integrase inhibitor (II), and rilpivirine, a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor, have been recently approved (Singh et al., 2019). The use of these longacting agents could potentially offer better adherence, leading to improved health outcomes for PWH (Simoni et al., 2019). PWH would only need to receive an IM injection in a health care setting once every four or eight weeks, instead of taking ART tablets every day (Singh et al., 2019). Understanding factors that affect ART adherence is paramount for the successful management of HIV infection (BritishHIVAssociation, 2016). As ILART is not routinely prescribed to treat HIV, there is limited scientific literature regarding PWH’s acceptability of this new form of ART treatment, and therefore, there is a need for data to better understand PWH’s preference for ILART (British HIV Association, 2016; Department of Health andHuman Services, 2021). The objectives of this study were to (a) understand factors that affect adherence and (b) explore the acceptability and preference of frequency and route of administration of ART, comparing these findings in two distinct settings.