Note: Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01MH140750. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
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NIMH Awards $3.3M Grant to Evaluate Community Pharmacy-based Intervention in Increasing HIV Testing and PrEP Uptake Access in Ghana
By Nora Williamson
Tuesday, September 15, 2026
New research funded by a $3.3 million National Institute of Mental Health grant aims to evaluate the effectiveness of utilizing community pharmacies to increase access to HIV testing in Ghana.
Gamji Rabiu Abu-Ba’are, PhD, MA, Associate Professor of Nursing, University of Rochester School of Nursing & Health Sciences, will lead a five-year study to implement and test a multilevel intervention program to upscale HIV testing and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) uptake for men with high HIV exposure by leveraging community pharmacies in resource-limited settings.
Conducted by a multidisciplinary team across the U.S. and Ghana, study collaborators include researchers from George Washington University, Emory University and University of Ghana School of Public Health. The research team will also work with such partners as the National AIDS Control Programme, Ghana AIDS Commission and Educational Assessment Research Center.
This new study is the latest research project for the School’s Behavioral, Sexual & Global Health Lab, which explores how stigma, behavioral exposures, and place-based factors influence access to prevention and treatment services for populations with high exposure to adverse behavioral health outcomes in the U.S., Sub-Saharan Africa, and Western Europe.
“Part of my research has focused on rethinking how and where we deliver HIV prevention, by bringing services closer to the places and communities where people live their everyday lives, and using mediums they trust,” Abu-Ba’are said. “This NIMH award will move this work from intervention development and formative research to a larger-scale effectiveness and implementation trial, to explore whether community pharmacies — which are part of everyday life — can help improve access to HIV prevention services in Ghana.”
Abu-Ba’are noted that the study will refine and implement the multilevel intervention and use a stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial to evaluate its effectiveness in improving HIV testing and PrEP uptake and evaluate implementation and scalability to understand how the model could support broader and sustainable delivery of pharmacy-based HIV prevention services.
The study will be conducted from September 2026 through May 2031.
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