Crowdsourcing strategies to improve access to HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis in Australia, the Philippines, Thailand and China.

Background: Many Asian countries have yet to scale up HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Crowdsourcing has a group of individuals solving a specific problem before sharing solutions with the public. This approach enhances community engagement and ownership of the solutions and can be used to generate culturally relevant solutions. We used crowdsourcing to seek innovative strategies to optimise PrEP access by increasing the uptake and effective use of PrEP. This study describes the experiences of crowdsourcing open calls in Australia, the Philippines, Thailand and China.

Methods: Four crowdsourcing open calls were conducted between 2021-2023 in Australia, the Philippines, Thailand and China. All open calls entailed: 1) problem identification; 2) committee formation with local groups; 3) community engagement for idea submission (e.g., texts, posters, pitches); 4) evaluation of submissions; 5) awarding incentives to finalists; and 6) solution dissemination via web and social media. We reported the number of total and high-quality submissions. We also identified themes across countries.

Results: The Australian, Filipino, Thai and Chinese teams received 9, 22, 9 and 19 eligible submissions, respectively. A total of 3, 10, 7 and 8 submissions had a mean score of 6/10 or greater. Three common solutions emerged across all the finalist ideas: enhanced service access, optimising promotional campaigns, and person-centred promotional materials. The winning ideas from the Australian, Filipino, Thai and Chinese teams were an anonymous online PrEP service, a printed ready-to-wear garment to create awareness about PrEP, PrEP and HIV self-testing kit dispensing kiosks and a poster on PrEP effectiveness, respectively.

Conclusions: Crowdsourcing was a promising and versatile tool for developing PrEP strategies in the Asia-Pacific region. Further evaluations via clinical trials can bridge the gap between idea generation and implementation, creating the empirical evidence that is pivotal for the policy adoption of these innovations.