Poverty, Mental Bandwidth, and an Unconditional Cash Transfer Intervention to Enable Health Behaviors for Pregnant Women with HIV

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

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Abstract

Candidate: I am a Fellow in Infectious Diseases at the University of Pennsylvania and a physician-scientist with a Master of Public Health degree and 5 years of experience working in rural Haiti. While I have a strong track record of published research at the intersection of poverty, food security, and infectious diseases, my experiences have motivated me to shift my research in two ways. First, I have developed an interest in poverty’s effects on decision-making, including the theory of poverty’s psychological impacts, the empirical measures of these impacts, and the scientific approaches used to examine the effects of poverty alleviation on health behaviors and outcomes. Second, I plan to move from observational work towards the design and execution of hybrid effectiveness-implementation clinical trials of innovative economic interventions to improve HIV outcomes. Background: Poverty is an important contributor to poor short- and long-term HIV outcomes for pregnant women with HIV. This problem is particularly salient in Haiti, where 25% of people live in extreme poverty and only half of pregnant women with HIV are retained in care 12 months after starting ART. It is also relevant in Botswana, where 15% of people live in extreme poverty, the HIV prevalence is >20%, and postpartum engagement in HIV care is similarly poor. Recent research in behavioral economics has shown that poverty can result in worse health outcomes by taxing mental bandwidth, resulting in a heightened focus on immediate needs and less attention to future-oriented decisions. Mental bandwidth is likely further taxed by the added burdens of HIV and the perinatal period. Consequently, anti-poverty interventions targeting pregnant women with HIV may be particularly effective at improving health outcomes. Training: To achieve research independence, I require additional training in 1) behavioral economics and the decision-making processes underlying health behaviors; 2) the conduct and analysis of qualitative studies; and 3) hybrid effectiveness-implementation clinical trials Research: I will use 3 aims to accomplish my objective of assessing a key pathway — mental bandwidth — by which poverty (and cash transfers to combat poverty) can affect health behaviors among pregnant women with HIV in rural Haiti and Botswana: 1) Characterize the relationship between mental bandwidth, HIV, and the perinatal period; 2) Identify key characteristics of an unconditional cash transfer intervention for pregnant women with HIV; and 3) Conduct a Hybrid Type 2 effectiveness-implementation trial of an unconditional cash transfer intervention for pregnant women with HIV. This research was originally set at St. Boniface Hospital in Fond-des-Blancs, Haiti, but because of geopolitical instability in Haiti will be completed at government-run antenatal clinics in Gaborone, Botswana. I will use the findings from this K23 as the basis for an R01 proposal to conduct a larger trial of an unconditional cash transfer powered for clinical outcomes (e.g., postpartum viral suppression).